If you should fancy yourself as an Archaeopteryx keeper you must be prepared to keep your pet caged at all times, it must never, never be allowed out. 

It may look like a bird, it may smell like a bird, it may even taste like a bird and it may sit on a branch and twitter, it can and will, with its claws, climb up almost anything, walls, trees, curtains, lamp standards etc, it can flap its wings and launch itself into the air with a squawk, but, it cannot fly, and it has not got the sense to know it! 

So having launched itself into the air with a great flapping and squawking, it will plummet and land with a thump in an undignified heap on the floor, then with much squawking and rustling of feathers it will pick itself up and be off looking for something else to climb and try again. 

This process will continue, each time climbing higher and higher until the stupid thing falls from such a great height that it breaks its neck.

Do not think that Archaeopteryx can be kept tethered to a perch like a parrot, it has about as much sense of balance as a drunken camel, you will just find your pet hanging upside down by its tether and looking very cross. 

The only answer is a cage, preferably without a perch or any other kind of platform that it can fall off

Archaeopteryx is not at all unhappy living in a cage, as long as it is properly fed, a few lizards, the odd mouse, the occasional dragonfly, it will be quite content. A word of warning is perhaps due here, Archaeopteryx does have very sharp teeth and will happily nip off a finger if given half a chance. 

Although Archaeopteryx cannot fly on his own, if you really wish to see your pet take to the air, there is always the Archaeopteryx Flight Kit, available from Dinosaur Products Ltd. The kit contains a pair of rather elegant expanded polystyrene wings, a two channel radio control transmitter, a 5cc model aeroplane engine and full instructions.

Once you have equipped your pet with this kit it is not only able to fly, but is capable of quite reasonable aerobatics as well. Another word of warning here, always be sure that the batteries are well charged and that you do not let it go out of range of the radio control. Once your pet realizes that you are no longer in control, it will perform the aerobatic manoeuvre it knows best, a high speed power dive! A full grown Archaeopteryx with a motor driven propeller strapped to its beak and diving from any reasonable height can bury itself a good 5 feet into the ground and can take considerable digging out!