Alligator Saga #4

Time for one last true gator story. This one’s my personal favorite. After I had been at the University of Florida for several years, each new crop of grad students came to regard me as a generally reliable source of information about the greater Gainesville area. One of the new teaching assistants, Mark Green, and I became friends and used to tour the countryside around Gainesville looking for fun things to see and do. While drinking our fair share of brewskis. One hot afternoon in mid-August, neither of us having pressing responsibilities since the summer session had ended and the next quarter was several days from beginning, he asked me to take him to the old botanical facilities on Lake Alice. He had tried to find them earlier and had been unsuccessful. I agreed and off we went.

Many years before then, in the early and mid-1940s, the University’s Botany Department maintained a lab-field station at a relatively isolated part of Lake Alice, where they grew all sorts of tropical and sub-tropical plants to aid in the War effort. By that time the station had been abandoned for well over two decades and had fallen into considerable disrepair. I found it without any trouble and after checking out what remained of the dilapidated wood buildings for a few minutes we headed for the Lake.

That particular summer had been ferociously dry and the Lake level was much lower than normal. We stood on what five months previously had been the bank just above water level and surveyed the exposed lakebed. To reach the water you had to cross at least seventy or eighty feet of bone-dry, cracked mud. To my surprise, Mark jumped down the two and a half foot bank to the flat lakebed and started off toward the water, camera in hand. He obviously was intent on getting a picture of something. Curious, I followed close behind. A little more than halfway across the dried bed I realized he was headed for trouble. I grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Where are you going?” I asked as casually as I could.

“To get a picture of the lake. My Dad has never seen an alligator and he doesn’t believe they’re all over campus. If I’m lucky a couple of them will be right off shore.” He turned to continue toward the Lake and was surprised when I held on to his arm. “What?” he asked, frowning.

“Tell me exactly where you want to shoot the photos from.”

“Right there,” he said, pointing. “From that log.”

“From what log?” I insisted.

“That one,” he said, pointing, sounding a little irritated.

“Take a closer look, dog-breath,” I told him. “That’s not a log. It’s a gator.” Which it surely was. An enormous alligator, basking on the mud, lay not three feet from the water. At least twelve feet long and as fat as the biggest hog you’ve ever seen. That sucker was seriously huge. Mark did a double take and nearly shit his pants.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, his mouth dropping open in shock. “I would have walked right over and tried to stand on it. Oh my God, I might have been killed. Oh, man, oh, man. Thanks. Really.”

Although visibly upset, Mark had the presence of mind to snap a few shots of the monster for dear old Dad back home. While my friend was thus engaged with his camera I picked up an old Coke bottle some idiot had previously thrown into the lake and heaved it in the gator’s general direction. Accuracy wasn’t my objective; I just wanted to stir Mark up a little. And I succeeded perfectly.

The bottle hit the dried mud about five or six feet from the gator’s tail. Mark jumped as if I had shoved a cattle prod straight up his butt.

“What the hell you doing?” His voice rose an octave or more until it hit girlie level. “Are you crazy?”

He looked at me as if I were completely devoid of any sense at all. Little did he know. His head jerked around nervously as he kept glancing at the gator to make sure it hadn’t moved. It opened one yellow eye but that was it.

“I’m getting out of here. Before it attacks us,” he said, pushing past me and half trotting back to the bank.

Incidentally, for decency’s sake I have omitted the actual language Mark used to tell me how stupid I was for trying to agitate such a large and dangerous reptile. Yes, Mother, I know. The boy had a good point. However . . .

As he approached the bank, the devil that permanently resides inside me whispered a truly heinous suggestion in my innermost ear. Immediately, I recognized the idea for the truly evil genius it was and acquiesced without a second’s hesitation. Just as Mark placed his foot on the edge of the bank I shoved his back hard and let out a hair-raising scream.

 “Holy shit! Here it comes!” I yelled in a terror-filled tone. “Get your ass moving! Hurry! Aaaaaaaah! Run, Mark, RUN!”

Of course, the alligator hadn’t moved an inch but with his back to the lake my poor victim couldn’t possibly know that. In desperation born of outright raw fear, his foot hit the bank and promptly slipped on the muddy-grassy surface. He immediately tried to jump up on the shore edge but slipped again on the slippery vegetation. In a state rapidly approaching mindless panic he shifted his weight and tried with the other foot, and promptly slipped again and again.

Well, to be perfectly honest, it probably didn’t help that I was screaming like a banshee while alternatively shoving him forward and then pulling back on his pants belt so he was constantly off-balance. Hey, what are friends for?

To tell the truth, he looked like a damn Saturday morning cartoon, his feet churning in super-fast motion, slipping and sliding on the mud bank while desperately looking over his shoulder trying to locate the rapidly charging reptile from Hell. It was so damned funny I finally collapsed on the bank, helpless. Laughing so hard my sides ached and tears flowed down my cheeks. The scene was absolutely hysterical. At least for me. Hey, even after all these years I still laugh at that scene.

Why Mark was less than thrilled to learn we were not about to be savaged by a ferocious gator, I’m not really sure. For a few minutes he was extremely pissed off at me. To put it as mildly as possible. Though, to his credit, after he settled down he laughed as hard as I did.

“Just wait,” he threatened, trying vainly to suppress his chuckles and wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes, “Paybacks are hell.”

On the way back to Mark’s car we passed the botany field station and stopped for another look-see. As we came out of one of the less deteriorated structures, both of us spotted a small, brightly colored snake as it slithered into a bunch of boards piled against the base of a tree. It moved so fast that neither of us had seen it clearly. As a genuine snake lover from early teenage days, there was no way I wouldn’t try to catch it. Or at the very least to identify it. I approached the pile of wood cautiously because I was wearing sandals with exposed toes and ankles. I loved snakes but wasn’t the village idiot. Grabbing a four-foot long stick I poked the pile, trying to frighten it into escaping. No luck.

“Go around the other side of the tree,” I ordered Mark. “Try pin it to the ground if it comes out. And be careful. We don’t want to kill it.”

I continued to probe the pile, watching like a hawk for the slightest movement. Suddenly, I felt a very sharp sting on the side of my bare foot. Certain I had been struck by a venomous snake, I yelled and leaped straight up in the air. When I came down there was Mark, laughing hysterically, holding a pointed stick in his hand.

Yes, indeed, Aunt Sylvia, paybacks are hell.