Essay/Term paper: Raptor red

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

1. The novel I read was "Raptor Red" by Robert T. Bakker. Published by

Simon &



Schuster, in 1995. Rapotor Red is a female raptor struggling to survive in a

kill or be



killed world on her own after losing her mate.



2. The setting changes all throughout the book as Raptor Red migrates

from one



place to another. In somesettings she is in thick rich mossy forests looking

for plump



Iguanadons to eat, to other desert like lands where the sun is so hot she

must sleep



through the midday and hunt late afternoon when the heat is bearable. Setting

is a very



important because the authour must reconstruct the crustacoius period setting

and all the



vegitation ,lust forests, muddy salt flats, sandy beaches, and dry temperate

valleys. These



settings are all very vital to the book because it creates the prehistoric

atmosphere and



brutal planet these giants once inhabited. One of the key elements to the

book to make it



more realistic is how the author describes in detail all the other animals

that Raptor Red



hunts and runs into in the book. The author puts great detail in how Raptor

Red stalks her



prey and kills her victims. Once you start reading this book and you see how

intelligent



raptors once were you really can't decipher Raptor Red's thinking to a modern

day



human hunter.



3. This book follows the life of Raptor Red and all the troubles a raptor

would face



in it's life from good times to bad. The book starts off with Raptor Red

hunting an



Ultrasaurus with her mate. They carefully select the dinosaur they will

single out to kill.



They look for faults in their prey, like injuries, preoccupation with

someting elese,



stragglers who want to rest for a while, just about anything to help assure a

safe victory



without any injuries to themselves. Raptor Red and her mate single out an

Ultrasaurus



who is preoccupied with trying to mate rather than pay any attention to the

fact that it



was being stalked by predators. Raptor Red and the mate kill the Ultrasaurus

on a mud



flat, and the Ultrasaurus falls on it's knees and dies. While Raptor Red and

her mate are



gorging on the larg animal her mate detects a scent of another kind of

smalled raptors in



the area that want some of the kill. Raptor Reds mate lets out a fierce roar

and a stomp to



scare away the smaller raptors. But when he stomped in the mud next to the

Ultrasaurus it



falls over in top of him, pinning him under the Ultrasaurus. The heavy

Ultrasaurus slowly



sinks deeper into the mud trapping Raptor Reds mate under it until her mate

drownds



slowly in the mud. Raptor Red is devistated and sits next to the Ultrasaurus

carcas her



mate is trapped under for 36 hours, until it sets into her she must accept

reality and move



on. Now Raptor Red must start a new life, and find more Utah Raptors like

herself so she



can join a new pack and have other Raptors to socialize with.





4. The first major event in Raptor Reds life was when her mate of five

years died





suddenly by a freak accident. " Raptor Red must now start over again, she

must go find



more raptors because raptors are socialable creatures who need affection and

to be with



others." The next major impact in Raptor Reds life is when Raptor Red finds

her sister



after searching for weeks for another raptor. Raptor Red has not seen her

sister for 5 years



and she is very excited to see her, and her sister has 3 baby raptors. "

Raptor Red wakes



the third week on her adventure to find other raptors she lifts her head

straight up into the



air and takes a deep breath. She recoginzes a scent, it's another raptor, a

more familiar



scent. It's her sisters distinct scent. One half of me Raptor Red thinks to

herself." The last



most significant thing in her life comes at the end of the book. Raptor Red's

sister dies of



an injury she received while trying to hunt a dinosaur they have never seen

before. Raptor



Red now lives with her sisters 2 baby raptors who are now adult, ( the third

baby raptor



died in it's sleep from an internal infection it had ) . Raptor Red also

lives with a new mate



she has found who she mates with and has 3 babies of their own. One of Raptor

Red's



nieces also finds a mate and has babies with them. Raptor Red's new family

consists of



her, her mate,their 3 babies, Raptor Red's 2 nieces, and one of the nieces

mate, and two



babies they had. All together they have a happy new family with ten members.





5. All together I enjoyed the book. I am intrested in dinosaurs and I

liked the fact



that the book displays the life of Utah raptors and their sophisticated life

style with their



highly developed intelligence yet primal brutal instincts. I liked reading

about how the



raptors thought and how their minds worked and they communicated. You could

easily



compare the conflicts and decisions the raptors had to make to a humans

conflicts and



decisions. But what makes this book intresting to me is reading and picturing

these



animals intelligence, yet use them in primal ways. For example, they hunted

sophisitcatedly



in groups and stalked their prey cunningly, yet they are fierce ferocious

primitive dinosaurs



who cold bloodly kill their prey and tear it open and eat raw liver and

endtrails until they



are full. The intelligence and instince working together.Two different

extremes of the brain



seperated by millions of years of evolution working together to help an

animal survive in



brutal world.



6."Survivor" would be the word I would choose because Raptor Red has delt

with



many hardships in her life and she keeps on forging forward to see what life

will throw at her next.