The Stegosaurus Who Was Cold

Stella the Stegosaurus stood at the edge of the Great Fern Meadow, shivering.

Now, if you know anything about stegosauruses, you know they have two rows of big, beautiful plates running all the way down their backs. Those plates are wonderful things — they soak up sunshine on warm days and let heat escape on hot days, kind of like having your very own built-in heating and cooling system.

But Stella's plates were covered in mud.

Thick, gloppy, greenish-brown mud, packed into every crack and crevice, smeared across every surface, caked on so heavily you could barely tell the plates were there at all.

And Stella was freezing.

"Brrrrr," she said, her teeth chattering like little rocks tumbling down a hill. "Why is it s-s-so cold today?"

Her friend Thud the Ankylosaurus waddled over, his armored tail swinging behind him. "Cold? Stella, it's the most beautiful day we've had all week. The sun is out, the ferns are warm, the dragonflies are —" He stopped. He squinted. "Stella. What is all over your plates?"

"Mud," said Stella proudly, giving a little shiver-shake. "I've been decorating."

"Decorating," Thud repeated.

"Yes! You know how your shell has all those bumps and patterns? And how Cora the Corythosaurus has that gorgeous crest on her head? Well, my plates were just... plain. So I went to the Big Mud Pit yesterday and I covered them up. Now they're textured." She turned to show him. The mud had dried into a lumpy, crackly mess. A chunk fell off and plopped onto the ground.

"Huh," said Thud.

"The problem is," Stella continued, "ever since I did it, I've been absolutely FREEZING. I think the weather must be changing. Do you think the Ice Time is coming early?"

"Stella, it's the middle of the Warm Season."

"Then maybe I'm getting sick!" She sneezed dramatically. A little more mud crumbled off her left plates. Where it fell away, a tiny patch of plate peeked through, and that small spot felt suddenly, deliciously warm in the sunshine.

But Stella didn't notice. She was too busy sneezing.

She trudged through the meadow, past the bubbling streams and the tall cycad trees, heading toward the Warm Rocks where the big dinosaurs liked to gather. Maybe if she sat on the Warm Rocks, she'd finally stop shivering.

Along the way, she ran into Pip, a tiny Compsognathus who was barely bigger than a chicken. Pip was sunbathing on a log, his little arms stretched out wide.

"Hi Stella! Nice day, right? I'm soaking up the — WHOA." Pip jumped back. "What happened to you?"

"I decorated my plates," Stella said.

"With... mud?"

"It gives them CHARACTER," Stella said firmly. Then she sneezed again.

"Are you okay?" asked Pip. "You look kind of... bluish."

"I'm FINE. I'm just cold. For some reason."

Pip tilted his tiny head. "You know what my mama always says? She says when something changes and then a problem starts, maybe the change and the problem are connected."

Stella blinked. "What does that mean?"

"I don't really know," Pip admitted. "I'm mostly thinking about bugs right now." He spotted a beetle and zoomed off after it.

Stella kept walking. She was shivering so hard now that the mud was starting to crack in more places. Little pieces kept falling off — plip, plop, plunk — leaving a trail behind her like muddy breadcrumbs.

And here's the funny thing: every time a piece fell off, that little bit of plate underneath felt warm. Like a tiny window had opened to let the sunshine in.

But Stella was shivering too hard to pay attention.

She finally reached the Warm Rocks, where old Maggie the Maiasaura was resting with her babies. The little ones were chasing each other around their mother's feet.

"Maggie," Stella said through chattering teeth, "c-c-can I sit on the Warm Rocks? I'm so c-c-cold."

Maggie looked at her with big, gentle eyes. "Of course, sweetheart. Come sit."

Stella squeezed her big body onto the flattest, sunniest rock she could find. It was warm underneath her belly, which helped a little. But her back — where all those mud-covered plates were — still felt like it was stuck in a snowstorm.

"Maggie," she said quietly, "I think something might be wrong with me."

"Hmm," said Maggie. "Tell me what changed."

"Nothing changed! I just — well, I put mud on my plates, but that's just decorating. That's not —"

She stopped.

One of Maggie's babies had climbed up onto the rock and was picking at the mud on Stella's lowest plate, the way babies pick at everything.

"No, no, don't —" Stella began.

But the baby had already pulled off a big chunk. And underneath, Stella's plate caught the full sunshine and —

Oh.

Oh, that felt WONDERFUL.

It was like stepping into a warm bath. Like wrapping up in the coziest leaf pile in the whole forest. That one plate buzzed with warmth, soaking up the sunlight, doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

Stella went very still.

She thought about her beautiful plates. She thought about how they always caught the morning sun and warmed her up for the day. She thought about how the breeze flowed over them on hot afternoons and cooled her down. She thought about how they were shaped just right, angled just so, like leaves tilting toward the light.

And she thought about how she'd covered every single one of them with mud.

"Oh," Stella whispered. "Oh no."

She looked at Maggie.

Maggie just smiled and nodded toward the stream at the bottom of the hill, where the water ran clear and cool over smooth pebbles.

Stella didn't say another word. She got up from the Warm Rocks and walked down the hill to the stream. She stepped in — the water was cold, but she was already cold, so it didn't much matter — and she began to wash.

She dipped and swayed and let the water rush over her back. She rubbed against the smooth river stones. She swished her tail and shook her whole body like a dog after a rainstorm. Mud came off in big, satisfying chunks, swirling away in the current like brown clouds dissolving into nothing.

Plate by plate, the sunshine found her again.

First one plate, warm. Then two. Then five. Then all of them, every single one, gleaming in the afternoon light, doing their extraordinary, ordinary job.

Stella stood in that stream and felt the warmth pour through her like honey. She closed her eyes. She let out the longest, happiest sigh any stegosaurus had ever sighed.

"THAT'S more like it," she said.

She climbed out of the stream and stood on the bank, water dripping off her clean, beautiful plates. Thud was there. Pip was there, still holding his beetle. Even Maggie's babies had toddled down to watch.

"Hey Stella," said Pip. "Your plates are really shiny."

Stella looked over her shoulder at them. They caught the light, each one glowing warm and golden, with their own curves and edges and little natural ridges — ridges that were far more interesting than dried mud had ever been.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "They really are."

She lay down in the soft ferns, the sun on her back, warm from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail, and she didn't shiver once for the rest of the day.

And she never visited the Big Mud Pit again.

Well — okay, she visited ONE more time. But only to splash in it, not to decorate. Because splashing in mud is just good fun, and even a stegosaurus knows the difference.