Another game we played at night was the Raptor Game. We had just seen Jurassic Park for the first time and while it was fresh on our minds we could play nothing that did not include dinosaurs. The plot device of humans versus intelligent predators was particularly appealing, so the next time the moon was out, we were stuck outside an upturned jeep (our grandpa’s boat, on a trailer by the jungle gym) and the raptors were prowling.
The game started much the same way as the Witch Game. But unlike the Witch Game, the raptors – again played most often by our little cousin, who could make a convincing raptor chirp, and sometimes joined by her brother, since raptors traveled in packs – were not confined to the dark and would be perfectly willing to snatch their prey off the porch if necessary. So we leaped form the porch post haste and the game began again, with much shrieking and yelling and chirping. But this game had another new rule: if the victims held still, the raptor could not see them. This was a bastardization of the Jurassic Park mythos, since only the tyrannosaurus was baffled by non-moving prey. But it made for good fun, so we employed the new rule anyway.
At first we treated the freezing rule much like that of Freeze Tag, where we would stop wherever we were and remain motionless in the most absurd position we could produce on the fly. At once the raptor was baffled and circled carefully, sniffing and prodding before signing with a rattling chirp and loping away. Once at a comfortable distance, the human statue would suddenly leap away and the angry raptor would again give chase.
After a while, though, we got a bit tired of the raptors constantly sniffing around our faces, pushing us until we stumbled (“you moved! Creeee!), and generally getting up in our personal bubbles. So someone devised a new variant in the rule by sprawling on the ground while being chased. Lying spread-eagled in the grass prevented the raptor pushing one about and it was much more acceptable to have the back of one’s head furtively snuffled rather than the face. The downside was that the raptor reserved the right to step absently upon one’s back while performing the investigation, which actually produced more giggles than groans. And even though the time taken to leap to one’s feet was time that the observant raptor could take to leap for the kill, the thrill of the chase was worth every extra nanosecond.
Once the humans escaped to the jungle gym, they were safe, but here too the rules were altered from Witch. Unlike the former rules where leaving the gym was a matter of good sportsmanship, in Raptor the humans were in an isolated compound that suffered from all manner of structural and technological weaknesses. As such, it was only a matter of time before the intelligent raptor(s) discovered and exploited a weakness, prompting an evacuations. Naturally, the raptors took advantage of the new system by exploiting new weaknesses (like monkey bars) within a minute or two of the initial escape. The situation was rather distressing until the humans learned to exploit the raptor’s hampered agility in the compound by waiting until she was clambering over a rarmpart before leaping to the ground and sprinting back to the porch. It was not so simple when two raptors played. In that case, one would invade while another patrolled and it was incumbent upon the fleeing humans to not be the slowest…
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