Down from the corner of Mulberry and Penobscot

The brontosaurus trotted down Mulberry street. With one step, its head swung right and its tail left. With the next step, its head swung left and its tail right. And so forth. Head and tail a like clubbed cars, telephone poles, lampposts, trees (like crepe myrtles), mailboxes, pedestrians, small dogs, and the ghosts of travelling salesmen trampled to death by the brontosauruses of the days of yore.

Of course, brontosauruses, famed for the miniscule size of their brain and the presence of a second brain in the rump to control the tail are not known for giving too much thought to larger matters of the world. This is illustrated by the fact that the head always goes one way the tail other. Many biologists might tell you that the opposing sway of the head and tail are a matter of balance. Those biologists are wrong and just plain stupid.

But not as stupid as brontosauruses, and likely not so happy either. After all there are the sayings, "happy as a brontosaurus" and "cheer up like a brontosaurus," and "there's no such thing as a sad brontosaurus." People always think brontosauruses must be too big to feel anything, and if they do it probably has to do with the constant need to eat. This particular brontosaurus, the one on Mulberry street, is in fact travelling down Mulberry Street towards Penobscot Street, and this particular day happens to be trash day. The brontosaurus stops every driveway to eat a special basket of wilted lettuce and other assorted vegetable remains that each neighbor dutifully leaves out next to the regular trash.

The neighbors would tell you that they leave the baskets of greens out because they love to take care of all of nature's creatures, the neighborhood brontosauruses most of all. They would never admit, especially not on national TV, that they hate the brontosauruses because the brontosauruses, THIS brontosaurus in the case of Mulberry street, roam the streets because the people kept feeding them. In such regards, the brontosauruses were not any different than backyard squirrels or the racoon who won't stay out of the garage. The main difference was that a spoiled squirrel or racoon would not go on a starved rampage through the suburbs, destroying cars, walls, houses, and pavement with the thunderous march of its footprints and catastrophic hurling of its body weight.

Several neighborhood ordinances attempted to eliminate the brontosaurus problem. The first ordinance required that nobody feed the brontosauruses in the hopes that they would seek sustanence elsewhere. This ordinance resulted in eleven dead and twenty two million dollars in property damage. The second ordinance called for a signed petition to be read allowed to the brontosauruses explaining that even on good days their presence caused thousands of dollars worth of damage, and would they kindly take their destruction elsewhere. Every resident signed the petition. The brontosauruses ate the petitions straight from the hands of the messangers. The cost to the city was the price of approximately one ream of paper and about two hundred man hours of signature aquiring labor. The third ordinance called for the creation of a central dumping ground for all vegatable refuse in the hopes that drawing all the brontosauruses to a consistent and strategically chosen feeding area would minimize both feeding damage and general brontosaurus free roaming. This experiment caused the city to discover that despite the scattered and apparently independent roaming of many brontosauruses, possibly encouraged by a lack of natural predators, brontosauruses were truly by nature pack animals. The alpha brontosaurus siezed control of the feeding pile, and the lower brontosauruses rampaged through the suburbs hoping to gain the alphas favor by making the main pile bigger. Damage resulted on the same level as that caused by the first ordinance.

The fourth ordinance called for the town and county police force to recruit a band of armed civilian volunteers in order to attempt to bring down or drive out the brontosaurus herd. This ordinance proved to be the most financially efficient as it saved the area the salaries of the numerous officers who lost their lives and opened up the job positions of the recently deceased citizenry to less fortunate individuals who were ambitious enough to apply. However, the ordinance was imediately repealed after the infamous B-Day massacre. Certainly, no one in the city council expected brontosauruses to turn so viscious when shot with armor piercing rounds.

The fifth ordinance, the first one to fail the vote, suggested that the entire town be relocated several miles to the east to a suitable sight in the hopes that the territoriality of the herd was the cause of their roaming. In a 4-3 vote, the prevailing argument suggested that the brontosauruses may have intially arrived in the area in search of a central herd territory, but that the consistent and readily available supplies of food ensured that they would be unable to survive on their own and would arrive in the newly resettled town in a starved and desperate state.

The final ordinance necessitated that the residents left a bucket of vegetable greens out once a week.

Chett and Sarah sat on a swinging bench on their porch on Mulberry Street. They held hands and watched the brontosaurus gracefully dip its head into the bucket on their driveway. It lifted its head, leaves of lettuce falling away from the sides of its mouth.

"So much like a cow," Chett says. "The way its mouth moves."

"What do you suppose they eat the rest of the week?" Sarah says.

No one really knew. No one wanted to know. All Chett and Sarah knew was that if they did their part, if they lived their lives in accordance to the law, the worst they could expect was a few hundred dollars of damage to their car, a few hundred dollars of damage to their lawn, and a variable amount of damage to the street and sidewalk per week. Unless of course, the brontosauruses tail knocked open the fire hydrant like it did two months before. Other than that though, that and the constant breaking of windows due to the thunderous shaking produced by the animals foot steps, all Chett and Sarah had to due was leave a bucket on their end of the driveway and make sweet love late in the evenings to baritone singers who laid their vox over bass guitar and a hand drum set to brass melodies.

"I really love you," Chett says, taking Sarah's hand in his.

"I really love you to," Sarah says. "Do you think this is a good neighborhooed to raise children?"

Mrs. Norman across the street and two blocks up pushes her stroller out of her front door, as if right on cue. The brontosaurus lifts its head from the bucket and looks over to Mrs. Norman. It swings its head towards and into the stroller. Leaving a Mrs. Norman's baby howling and newly naked, the brontosaurus swallows the babies clothing and goes back to its buckets.

"Of course my love," Chett says. "We're gonna have a healthy litter. Have you checked on the eggs this morning?"

Sarah opens the hatch in her stomach. She pats Chett on the cheek with playful condesencion. "Every five minutes."

Like little brontosaurus eggs, Chett thinks as he looks at the eggs in Sarah's storage compartment. He leans forward, hovering his face over Sarah's belly. He knows what an act of will it takes for Sarah to supress her instincts and not kill him for getting so close to her eggs. He breathes his hot breath gently on the eggs. It's almost like touching them, he thinks. I wish I could touch them, but then she really would kill me and I can't say that I'd blame her.

When he leans back from the clutch, Sarah closes her stomach and relaxes. She slides her hand back under Chetts, and together they watch the brontosaurus rear onto its hind legs to the top of a tree. Chett sighs, and wonders what his children will look like as they hatch from their eggs, climb onto his lap, and begin to eat him to build their strength. Those first days will be crucial, Chett thinks, I'll need to start fattening myself up.