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"You mean," the newsreader asked, in well-feigned amazement, "that they can recognise each other?"

"Why not? Many animals can." The palaeontologist pointed, but since the scene in the park was still on screen, nobody noticed the gesture. "You’ll notice that they’ve stripped the cycads bare but left most of the other plants alone, and the grass too. That’s because most of those plants, and the grasses, didn’t exist when these animals walked the earth."

"And that means...?"

"That means they are going to have a food problem soon," the scientist explained. "We’re going to have to fly in food for them if this goes on."

The camera cut back to the studio. "What do you intend to do about them?" the newsreader asked.

"Do about them?" The palaeontologist was obviously taken by surprise. "What should we do about them? Nothing, except keep them under observation, and learn what we can." He paused. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime, to learn all about dinosaurs."

"Some people feel differently," the newsreader said. "The National Hunter’s Association has already demanded that the dinosaurs be exterminated as an immediate threat. We’re going now, live, to an interview with the NHA chief..."

That was mid-morning on Monday.

By noon, the city had virtually come to a standstill.

The medusaceratops were everywhere. One appeared in the middle of a traffic island, shaking its gigantic head in confusion at the streams of vehicles moving past on either side. Another couple strolled through a school playground, ignoring the stampede their presence caused amongst the children. Some more had gathered in the square outside the town hall, where the mayor had scheduled a press conference. To his baffled fury, the conference failed before it began because all the media people he’d called to disclose his plan for dealing with the dinosaurs promptly abandoned him in order to get a closer look at the animals themselves from the safety of the town hall steps. 

The streets began to clog with traffic as medusaceratops began blocking the ways, wandering at will through lanes and avenues alike, and dropping occasional piles of greenish dung. The herd in the park had long since emerged, broken up into small groups, and shambled off in different directions. Inevitably, they approached cars, many of whose panic-stricken drivers promptly abandoned their vehicles, jamming the ways behind them and bottling traffic up for kilometres. Helicopters lent by the Air Force clattered overhead, trying to make some kind of sense of the confusion, the noise disturbing the dinosaurs and making them disperse into even more areas of town. And meanwhile, the highways leading to the city were themselves full – of hopeful hunters, scientists, and tourists, all jostling for space with military convoys.

And though the medusaceratops had as yet to injure, let alone kill, a single person, something clearly had to be done, and many were the suggestions of what that something was.

Evangelical sects got into the act early, claiming that the dinosaurs were an attempt by the Devil, in conjunction with atheistic scientists, to overturn religious order, and a purge of science from day-to-day life was necessary to send them back where they came from. Psychics said they’d been conjured out of the collective unconsciousness, and a mass focussing of the collective consciousness would be required to get rid of them. A general advised capturing them and releasing them across the border of Iran to create confusion and help destabilise the Ayatollahs. The animal-rights activists wanted them put in a national park, where they could live happily ever after. And the hunters wanted to use them for target-practice, of course. 

By mid-afternoon, the first clashes began between animal-rights activists and hunter groups, with the former waving placards and the latter guns. They would undoubtedly have come to blows, and perhaps worse (given the hunters’ guns), but for the sudden appearance of a few medusaceratops, who – probably and not unpardonably confused by the shouting and threats – made a brief abortive charge, whereupon the animal rights activists dropped their placards, the hunters their deer rifles, and both groups rushed off with wild yells of terror. The medusaceratops reassembled and ambled off in order to find something to eat.

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