Hello! I am going to tell you who I am. My name is Snappy as my teeth snap tight on my food! I have whiskers and look like a little mouse, though I am not. I am a mammal like you! All the same, in some ways I am very different to you, for I lived with the dinosaurs. And you don’t…
We had a lot of trouble with them. You see we used to come out at night, because most of the dinos were asleep. And then, we would try to find some of their eggs to eat. You like a nice egg, don’t you? Maybe we’re not so different after all. Dinos laid a lot of eggs, which was good for us. The more we ate, the more they laid, and the more dinosaurs there were, which was not good for us.
Of course, I can’t count, (though you can) and if you had been about, and counted the dino eggs for us, I think you would say there were about 40 sometimes. Enough for a birthday party! All of us mammals have birthdays, but you are the only one that has them on a special day. For how would we know when our birthday is? We just have a birthday when we feel like it, and I think that is much better. But we do have to be careful. And that is what I am going to tell you about.
Early one night, my friend Snappy 2, – for his teeth snap tight on his food too – and I were not cold, for we had warm blood, like you, but we were hungry. We slipped off together to see what we could find for supper. “Do you think we will find some dino eggs?” said Snappy 2.
“If we’re lucky,” I said. “we’ll have to be careful. We don’t want to go near eggs where the Dino Daddies are looking after them. They might decide they want us for supper or breakfast or whatever.”
“I don’t think so,” said Snappy 2. “They might be herbivores. And we’re too small for them to bother with.”
“Hm,” I said. “Not too small to kill if we’re eating their eggs…”
“Well, we can go somewhere else,” said Snappy 2. “Why don’t we go where we got found eggs last time?”
So we did. We saw really well at night, much better than you humans. We both knew where to go, just as you know where the biscuits are in your home, and we were in luck. There was a pile of dino eggs, under a pile of leaves (to keep them warm). And there were no dinosaurs about! Not even sleeping dinos!
“This calls for a party,” said Snappy 2. “I think it’s my birthday and I want to have a birthday party! I’ll go and invite everyone.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “It’s safer together.” It didn’t take us long to find our family and friends and invite them to the birthday party! And what a yummy feast of dino eggs we had!
This story is related to my latest book Trees in the time of Dinosaurs, which is available here (and other bookshops).
If you want to listen to the audio version of this story, here is the link: https://charlotteswonderfulstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/a-birthday-in-the-time-of-dinosaurs.mp3
Enjoy, and I hope you’ll be here next month.
Charlotte Sebag-Montefiore
Charlotte's Wonderful Stories 