The Dinosaur Who Followed the Laundry Truck

Rowan Vale was halfway through tying her shoes when the spoons began to rattle.

Not fall. Not bounce.

Rattle.

She stopped with one lace in each hand.

RUMBLE. RUMBLE. RUMBLE.

Outside, a car alarm began to honk.

Then somebody shouted, "WHAT IS THAT?"

Rowan ran to the front window.

At the end of the street stood a dinosaur.

A real dinosaur.

It was greenish-brown, taller than the delivery van parked beside it, and had three horns on its enormous head.

Rowan knew exactly what it was.

"Triceratops," she whispered.

The Triceratops sniffed a recycling bin.

It sneezed.

The lid flew into Mrs. Dimple's hedge.

Rowan grabbed her notebook.

By the time she reached the porch, neighbours were peeking from windows and doorways.

"Stay back!" called Mr. Pike.

"Call somebody!" shouted Mrs. Dimple.

"Who?" asked Mr. Pike.

Nobody seemed to know the correct telephone number for a dinosaur.

The Triceratops wasn't charging or roaring. It simply stood in the road, swinging its heavy head from side to side.

Then the neighbourhood laundry truck turned the corner.

It was a small white truck that collected bags of sheets and towels from the guesthouses near the harbour.

The Triceratops froze.

The truck drove past.

The dinosaur turned.

And followed it.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

"It's chasing the truck!" cried someone.

Rowan wasn't so sure.

She opened her notebook and wrote:

OBSERVATION ONE: Dinosaur follows laundry truck.

The truck stopped at the next house.

So did the dinosaur.

The driver, Mr. Sal, climbed out, saw the Triceratops and climbed straight back in.

"I have never been trained for this," he announced through the closed window.

The dinosaur sniffed the back of the truck.

Then it made a low, unhappy sound.

"Mrrrrrrrrooooh."

Rowan tilted her head.

It didn't sound angry.

It sounded worried.

Mr. Sal drove forward.

The dinosaur followed.

Rowan followed the dinosaur.

Her neighbour Theo followed Rowan.

"Are we allowed to do this?" Theo asked.

"Probably not closely," said Rowan.

So they stayed well back.

At the corner, a bag of laundry slipped from the truck and landed on the road.

Mr. Sal didn't notice.

The Triceratops hurried toward it.

Everyone scattered.

But instead of trampling the bag, the dinosaur lowered its head and sniffed.

It pushed the bag gently with its nose.

Then it sniffed again.

Rowan wrote:

OBSERVATION TWO: Dinosaur interested in laundry.

Theo stared at her.

"Maybe it wants clean towels."

"Why?"

"Maybe dinosaurs hate being damp."

Rowan considered this.

"Possible. Not likely."

Mr. Sal finally returned for the dropped bag. Rowan told him what she had seen.

He opened the back doors of the truck.

Inside were bags of sheets, towels, tablecloths and clothes waiting to be washed.

The Triceratops took one step closer.

Then another.

It sniffed so hard that a pillowcase fluttered.

Suddenly it gave a loud, hopeful grunt.

"It's definitely looking for something," Rowan said.

Mr. Sal frowned.

"In my laundry?"

They began checking the bags from a safe distance.

Sheets.

Towels.

Aprons.

More towels.

One tablecloth with tomato sauce on it.

Then Theo lifted a small striped sock.

The Triceratops bellowed.

Theo dropped it.

"THE SOCK DID IT!"

The dinosaur hurried forward, but Rowan noticed something else.

Wrapped around the sock was a long piece of dried grass.

Not ordinary lawn grass.

This was thick, golden grass with feathery purple tips.

Rowan had seen it that morning.

"The meadow!" she said.

Beyond the last houses was a wide meadow where wild grasses grew beside an old stone wall.

Rowan, Theo and Mr. Sal led the laundry truck slowly toward it.

The Triceratops followed.

At the meadow, Rowan searched the grass.

She found huge footprints.

Then a broken patch in the old stone wall.

Then another set of footprints.

Smaller ones.

Much smaller ones.

A squeaky call came from behind a clump of golden grass.

"Mreep!"

The enormous Triceratops answered at once.

"MRRROOOH!"

Out waddled a baby Triceratops.

It had one sock hooked over its tiny horn.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Theo whispered, "The dinosaur wasn't following the laundry truck."

Rowan smiled.

"She was following the smell."

Earlier that morning, a basket of washing from a house beside the meadow had tipped over in the wind.

One sock had blown into the grass, where the baby dinosaur had apparently discovered it.

Later, the baby had wandered through the broken wall and become separated from its mother.

Somehow, the matching laundry smell had ended up inside Mr. Sal's truck.

The mother hadn't been chasing anyone.

She had been searching.

The baby hurried to her.

The mother lowered her great head and nudged it so gently that everyone on the road went quiet.

Even Mr. Pike.

Especially Mr. Pike.

Rowan wrote one final note:

OBSERVATION THREE: A frightening thing can look very different when you know what it is trying to do.

Mr. Sal read over her shoulder.

"That's a pretty good observation."

"I have another one," said Theo.

Rowan waited.

"Never underestimate a smelly sock."

That evening, the two dinosaurs disappeared beyond the meadow.

No one knew where they went.

The broken wall was repaired.

Mrs. Dimple recovered her recycling-bin lid.

And Mr. Sal added a new rule to his laundry route:

Always latch the back doors.

Rowan kept the page from her notebook.

Not because she needed proof.

She kept it because whenever someone said, "I know exactly what's happening," Rowan wanted to remember the day an entire neighbourhood thought a dinosaur was chasing a laundry truck.

When really, she was just looking for her baby.