Caretaker

There was a low growl from somewhere to his left and Tony stilled. The cage beside him meant nothing could reach him but it was still nerve-wracking being this close to technical monsters. If he was being honest, they were animals, not monsters. Extinct once, but still animals.

Turning his head, flicking ever so in a way that moved hair from his brow, he stared. The brown of his eyes reflected back the distant light behind him but the animal through the bars probably didn't notice or care. Feathers sprouted along the large body of the lizard before him. Tony didn't know how else to describe the dinosaur before him aside from a large, strong, angry chicken.

Tony shifted himself, his whole body moving to the left and then the right in a sway. The velociraptor followed, the body nearly as tall as Tony, swayed. The long tail, also covered in feathers, swayed with more exaggeration. The caretaker smiled and lifted a hand, spreading out his fingers and the animal jumped a bit, pushing its large maw to the strong metal bars of the cage.

The velociraptor opened wide, both rows of sharp, dangerous teeth showing as the animal tried to bite the metal. Tony wouldn't dare get any closer than this. He had already put food in the other cage and pushed the swine through but the raptor was always more interested in the feeder. While the pig squealed away, the raptor eyes Tony by shifting the large head to the side and gluing one large, yellow eye onto him.

Tony felt his heart start to pick up speed as it always did, the sound of the other raptors making it only worse. This one, the one with geometric red and blue dots on the hind thighs, was their leader. While the three others sprinted after the food, Alpha bore a hungry look into Tony.

With a shift, Tony pulled his hand back and then grabbed up his bucket. He didn't turn his back on the violent carnivore but he did head away. Alpha snarled, raising its head and making those high-pitched noises that made no sense to the caretaker. From the cage, the raptor was free to go back into the main cage where it was surrounded by thousands of pounds of thick concrete and high-reaching electric fencing. The whole place was a few miles of freedom for the prehistoric animals with a few main areas where they could come out and look at the world around them, like this small space that was right beside their feeding entrance.

Far be it for Tony to question the builders thought process when putting those two things so close.

For the next group of animals to tend to, they were easier. Given roughly four miles of land, the ornithomimus had no teeth. They loved to run and roam in packs a bit like raptors only the 'mimus were rarely hazardous on purpose to humans. They ate small creatures, mostly stealing eggs, and plants.

All Tony had to do was place dozens of eggs into a bucket and drive in a Jeep to entry points, much like the raptors, and put the eggs into a small chute. They were laid by other animals and plucked for precision to make sure the others animals would not suffer horribly without them.

Tony watched a few eggs once he had put them down, knowing the mimus would be around eventually. The small light off of the fence-not in range for the mimus to get to-kept the eggs incubated enough that they didn't go bad. He smiled, knowing there was no fear to be had for these creatures and he loved them. Really, they were his favorite but they only were fed eggs three times a week since they could live mostly off of plants and random animals that wandered into their enclosure.

Up next was his second favorite: tethyshadros. They were once in Italy ages ago and were much smaller than their relative hadrosaurs. With their long, duck-billed faces, ate nothing but plants. All he had to do was go through the large, heavy gate in the jeep. He drove around to make sure that the plant life was thriving which, to be fair, could have been done with cameras but he didn't complain.

When done with this, he headed back to the main building in this section of the island — not part of a theme park — and paused by the raptor cage again. Alpha was nowhere in sight and he couldn't hear anything. That didn't mean anything aside from that they were probably done with the pigs, but it still made Tony nervous.

Gooseflesh rose upon his arms and the back of his neck as he headed slowly, ever so slowly past the mile-long section he had to force himself down. A good chunk of it was solid concrete but the open sections had his heart racing, palms sweaty.

Just as he had been expecting, on the last open section, two raptors slammed into the thick bars and snarled at him. Going slow in an attempt to avoid making a lot of noise, he jumped hard and slammed on the acceleration by accident. It made him jerk in the seat, wheel snapping a few inches towards the raptors before he righted it and sped up even more to get away from those loud calls.

Pushing into the building nearly 20 miles away from the raptors, Tony washed his hands and tried to act perfectly casual as he ate a bar and got a drink before he would reload on food and head to more animals. None of them scared Tony nearly as bad, however.

The raptors were always the worst, given that the T-rexes had long ago been found too hazardous and they didn't rebreed them so they died out. The raptors had ended up being the worst creatures on the island and Tony, not willing to question aloud the thought process, had to wonder silently why the place thought fast, smart, violent carnivores were worse than large, "can feel you coming a mile away" T-rexes.

Tony supposed that was why he was the caretaker and not the person in charge.