The dinosaurs who loved trampolining

by Thomas Campbell

Once upon a time a long time ago there lived on an alien planet far, far away from here, a gymnastic young dinosaur who you may be surprised to learn just loved to trampoline. He lived with his family in a wandering herd of plant-eating herbivores and whether they were young or old - they all loved trampolining.

This (you will be thinking) is a very unlikely scenario. None of your text books (you are shouting now) say anything about dinosaurs on trampolines. But that (I argue) is because your books only describe the life and times of earthy dinosaur types not alien dinosaurs. (Some of the most amazing stories ever told require you to suspend disbelief. This is one of those moments where it is probably wise to just accept this story as it unfolds)

The dinosaur trampolines were made from the strongest material on their planet which was spun by very obliging and very prehistoric animals much like the spiders that we know on earth - only considerably bigger. You get the picture! Every year the dinosaurs held a competition for the young dinosaurs called the Big Bounce with the winner being - yes you guessed it, the dinosaur who bounced the highest. Now our young dinosaur friend was really very talented on a trampoline and so competitive that each night he secretly trained all night in order that he might win.

There were several classes to enter and our young friend couldn't decide which one he would be best at. He imagined winning the juvenile sauropod Big bouncy Air class (for the most technical and daring airborne twists and turns); he imagined himself winning the Big bouncy relay race (where four dinosaurs pass a tree baton to each other and the team who finishes bouncing first wins) and most of all he dreamt of winning the Big bouncy freestyle class (which because it had no rules) was incredibly difficult to actually win.

The day of the Big Bounce dawned and our young friend decided to save his energy for the final class of the day - the freestyle. He persuaded his whole family to enter with him and urged them to perform an acrobatic, circus-style freestyle routine with entwined arms, legs and tails. When their turn came to compete their combined strength took them all by surprise as they together summoned up super power capabilities and bounced with all their humongous dinosaur strength, rocketing themselves up through the alien planet atmosphere so fast that they propelled themselves on an explosive trajectory out and up into outer space hurtling towards a neighbouring planet - called Earth.
As they sped towards Earth's atmosphere, they were (luckily) met by hurricane force prehistoric winds that cushioned and spun them gently down to the Earth planet's surface like a helter-skelter.

And this goes some way to explain how dinosaurs came to roam our planet and why when I look at pictures of dinosaurs (to my mind anyway) they look like alien beings from another planet.