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Episode Studies by Clayton Barr enik1138-at-popapostle-dot-com |
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Cha-ka brings a dozen Pakuni to breakfast at High Bluff; a baby tyrannosaur and it's mother interrupt the day. Notes from the Marshall Timeline I placed The Surprise Guests at this point in the timeline because, as Rick says in the book, "Cha-ka wants more of your good cooking, Holly," so that suggests it might be shortly after "The Paku Who Came to Dinner". Didja Notice?
This book is the first time we see Pakuni besides Cha-ka, Ta and Sa. In fact we meet a dozen of them here, but don't learn their names or where they came from (or where they went after this!). Presumably, Ta and Sa are among them. On page 3 and elsewhere, Cha-ka seems able to use the "L" sound even though it is established in Pakuni speech in the episodes (and in linguist Victoria Fromkin's notes) that the Pakuni have no "L" sound in their language. He even speaks Holly's name correctly instead of "Ari". For the puritan fans among us (like me), I think we have to pretend he uses "R" sounds wherever we see an "L". On pages 9 and 10, Cha-ka takes two helpers to fetch a gigantic dinosaur egg for Holly to cook. Are the "helpers" actually Ta and Sa? As the mother dinosaur approaches on page 16, three unusual lizards appear to scatter into the rocks and jungle: a blue one, a red one, and a green one.  The two-clawed forelimbs of the baby and mother dinosaurs indicate they are tyrannosaurs, although they are depicted as bluish in coloration rather than brown like Grumpy. They may be a different species of tyrannosaur than our favorite Tyrant king. The motion lines on the art of page 17 seem to indicate that not only are the bushes and trees trembling from the shock of the mother dinosaur's footsteps, but so are the distant mountains!  The smoke on pages 19 and 21 indicate there is an active volcano near the Marshall's area of the Land of the Lost. 
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