Escape to Space

Have you ever wondered how crocodiles and alligators managed to outlive the dinosaurs? Well, here’s how they did it.

Long ago, during the Mesozoic era, there lived two clans of awe-inspiring creatures. There were the Sarcosuchus, the ‘super-crocs’, and the Deinosuchus, the ‘gateroids’. These gigantic beasts are the ancestors of our current day crocodiles and alligators. 

Towards the end of what we now know as the Cretaceous period, the super-crocs became aware of a cataclysmic event, big enough to wipe out life on the planet. They didn’t know exactly what would happen, but they knew it would be happening soon. The super-crocs and gateroids were exceptionally smart, much more intelligent than the crocs and gators we know today. They decided the best way to escape extinction would be to build a rocket to take them all into space. And they did! They worked tirelessly for months on end, and eventually, they completed their rocket. 

The super-crocs and gateroids gathered everything they thought they might need to support their clans in space and blasted off. Their trajectory turned out to be a little wonky, however, and instead of heading out into deep space to find a new planet to rebuild their civilization, their rocket flew straight toward the moon. They landed on the moon, and the arguments began.

The gateroids blamed the super-crocs for landing them on the moon, as they had been in charge of the trajectory mechanics. The super-crocs blamed the gateroids, as they had been in charge of packing the cargo hold. They said it hadn’t been packed correctly and had thrown their trajectory off course. In the end, the two clans parted ways. The gateroids built themselves a gigantic dome, with a large village underneath it for them to live in. The super-crocs, the more intelligent of the two, built themselves several giant structures, that sat on or hovered just above the surface of the moon. They used these structures not only to live in but also to watch over the Earth. From these structures, they saw the mountain-sized meteor hurtling through space towards the Earth. They watched as it blasted through the atmosphere, streaking through the sky like a fireball, brighter than the sun, and slammed into the Earth. 

The super-crocs watched as the earth surrounding the impact zone spontaneously burst into flame. Then came the massive tsunami, over 1000 feet high, flooding the land. Almost ten minutes after the impact the Earth was covered by hot ash, grit, and rubble falling from the sky. As the pieces of earth that had been thrown into the sky descended back through the atmosphere, a glowing red shower of what looked like shooting stars lit up the quickly darkening skies. The super-crocs then had trouble even seeing the Earth, as the ash and debris in the atmosphere around the globe got in the way. They imagined anything left alive on the Earth would be living in a kind of perpetual twilight for many years to come.

The super-crocs monitored the Earth for a very long time after the meteor hit, and eventually, they decided it might be habitable again. By this stage, the super-crocs and gateroids had started speaking again, and whilst some of them decided they wanted to stay living on the moon, a large number from both clans wanted to return to the Earth. They thought with the dinosaurs extinct, they would be able to control the other animals and be kings of the Earth. However, by the time they returned to the planet, humans had taken over, and the super-crocs and gateroids had to hide themselves away in the rivers, lakes, and oceans where the humans couldn’t hunt them. Living in the waterways dulled their intelligence and stunted their growth and they became the crocodiles and alligators we know today. However, they have always longed to return to the moon, to their brothers and sisters in space. Without their intelligence, they can’t get there, but they will try to get as high in the sky as they can.

So if you ever see a crocodile or an alligator up in a tree, you’ll know they are trying to get back to their clan, trying to escape to space.