God Announces Bailout Plan for Dinosaurs

Jason is a genius.

Struggling Reptiles Deemed "Too Big to Fail.

Earth, 65 Million B.C.

Up to 800 billion kilo-calories will be diverted from Earth’s biosphere to aid the struggling dinosaurs, God said at a press conference this afternoon.

The announcement came only days after United Therapod announced that it had finished out the reproductive season with a loss of 2 million individuals, raising fears among genetic stockholders that the line of carnivorous dinosaurs would go extinct.

This marks the third straight year that UT has posted a net population loss.

Under God’s new economic plan, UT would be one of several dinosaur groups receiving billions of kilo-calories collected from global food webs.

It is hoped that this calorie bailout will give the dinosaurs time to restructure in the face of a changing global environment.

“The dinosaurs are too big to fail” said God, “We have a responsibility to the small animals that feed upon these giants’ feces. I will not allow millions of feces eaters to go unfed. To not take swift action to prevent the extinction of the dinosaurs will result in an unmitigated disaster.”

Another dinosaur group that stands to benefit from the bailout is General Saurapod, who has long invested in huge long-necked bodies. These giant bodies were quite popular before the Yucatan asteroid impact, but now face starvation due to caloric needs far in excess of what they can obtain by grazing the sparse vegetation that remains. This will be the second bailout that GS has received. It was previously given 100 million kilocalories to prevent its extinction during the late Jurassic period.

When reached by phone, GS president Grom Thundertail praised the second bailout: “What’s good for General Sauropod is good for all lifeforms.”

But not all lifeforms support the bailout. According to one crocodilian, “If you want to be a high-roller with big bodies and fast metabolisms, fine, but I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my calories for you to do it—I mean, these guys didn’t talk about sharing when they were having reproductive success.” This swamp-dweller’s attitude is typical of many mid-sized reptiles, amphibians, and fish, who object to having their own food supplies—already decreased by the effects of last year’s asteroid impact—further diminished in an effort to keep the dinosaurs alive.

Fast Darkwater, a shark of the inland sea, said “I think diverting calories to keep them alive is just going to make this disaster worse for the rest of the ecosystem. And, you know, everyone talks about all the feces eaters and gut worms and skin lice that will lose their niches. But no one talks about all the new niches that would be created if these damned “thunder lizards” were allowed to croak. I mean, look at that new start-up lifeform, Birds Limited. They’d have never broken into aviation if God had bailed out the pterosaurs at the end of the Jurassic.”

The few remaining pterosaur species, while not technically dinosaurs, are also eligible to receive bailout calories under God’s new redistribution plan.

Threestripe Rex, spokes-reptile of UT, responded to complaints in a press conference that took place an hour after God’s announcement. “Look, I have a degree in ecology, my staff all have degrees in ecology, we know what we’re doing. This bailout plan is unfortunate, but it will be the last one. We have very sophisticated risk-assessment models that tell us that the odds of another dramatic climate change happening are virtually zero.” When asked by a reporter why these risk models had not anticipated the asteroid strike, Rex became impatient: “You can’t expect a model to take account of exogenous variables.”

After fielding questions about how his group would use the bailout calories—revealing plans for bigger jaws and a new line of “environmentally friendly” omnivores—Rex assured the crowd that “United Therapod will be strong again, and all species will benefit.” He then left the conference room, pausing to scrape the crushed remains of a small mammal from off his foot.