The Dinosaur's Diary (Young Puffin Story Books) by Julia Donaldson Page B

were making a dreadful racket – not their usual twittering but a shriller, louder, panicky-sounding ‘Twhit! Twhit!
Twhit!’
It sounded like some kind of warning, and immediately I realized that that’s just what it was, because I could hear something else – the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs!

    I scrabbled under the hay just in time, and kept completely still. Someone or something started rummaging around in the hay. I prayed that it wasn’t a meat-eating dinosaur. Surely whoever it was must be able to hear my heart thumping.
    To my relief the rummaging stopped and I heard the footsteps disappear down the stairs.
    I peeped out of the hay just in time to see a creature with floppy-looking blue skin walking out of the barn on its hind legs.
    ‘Who was that?’ I asked.
    ‘The farmer,’ said Swinburne.
    ‘The
farmer
!’ But that was the dreaded egg-eater, wasn’t it? ‘Oh no – was he looking for eggs?’
    ‘You are funny, H,’ said Swinburne. ‘No, he was just getting some hay.’
    ‘But I can’t lay my eggs here if this farmer creature is going to keep nosing around,’ I said.
    ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Swinburne. ‘Sorry about that. Maybe the junk corner would be a better place. The farmer hardly ever goes there. Come and see what you think.’
    I lumbered down the stairs (which was much trickier than getting up them) and followed Swinburne to a dark corner of the barn. At first I couldn’t see much, but as my eyes grew used to the dim light I began to make out a jumble of strange objects.

    ‘These are all the old broken things the farmer doesn’t need – forks, spades, rakes, wheelbarrows …’
    I didn’t take in any more because at that second I saw something which made me tremble all over. It was a monster like the one I saw yesterday on the lumpy earth, only this one was brown instead of red.
    ‘Help! A Tractosaurus!’ I squealed. I ran all the way back to the hay loft and buried myself again. It was a long while before Swinburne could persuade me to come out.
    Trying not to laugh, he told me that a Tractosaurus (or tractor, as he insists on calling it) isn’t actually alive at all; it’s something called a machine, whatever that is. It doesn’t eat animals or plants; it just likes a drink called diesel but it can’t drink that all by itself – the farmer has to feed it.
    I still wasn’t convinced. ‘But I saw the other one, the red one, running around and roaring.’
    ‘That’s because the farmer was driving it. But he can’t drive this one. It’s all old and rusty. It doesn’t work any more. That’s why it’s in the junk corner.’
    At last I plucked up courage to go back. Sure enough, the Tractosaurus didn’t move when Swinburne perched on it or even when he giggled, flew above it and spattered it with some white stuff.
    Feeling very brave, I reached out with one of my front legs and touched the Tractosaurus gently. It felt cold and hard.
    ‘I still don’t think this is a good nesting place,’ I said. ‘What I’d really like would be some nice mud.’
    ‘Mud!’ exclaimed Swinburne. ‘Really, H, why didn’t you say so before? We can find you plenty of that. Come on, mob, off to the pond!’ he called out to the other swallows. ‘You wait there, H.’

    Before I could reply, the barn was a flurry of activity. The swallows had flown off their own nests and were helping to build mine!
    In and out of the barn they flew. They flew out with empty beaks; when they returned their beaks were full of mud. Mind you, one swallow’s beakful is not much mud at all, but there were so many of them and they worked so fast that it soon mounted up. What bothered me was
where
it was mounting up – inside the Tractosaurus itself!
    ‘No – not there!’ I tried to tell them, but they took no notice. The rusty old Tractosaurus was to be the home for my eggs, and that was settled. Before long I had quite come round to the idea myself.
    Swoop didn’t join in the