Gators on the Brain, Part 2

About four years before my alligator sighting in a canal along U.S. 264 coming back from the Outer Banks, I was living in New Orleans, working for a state-funded cultural magazine. My then-boss, David Johnson, had moved to the Crescent City several years earlier from his native Missouri, and thought that Luziana was near about the greatest place on earth. So naturally, being from North Carolina, which is God’s own country, I felt compelled to set him straight.

The roaches in this city, I would say, are the size of cars. The raindrops come down so hard, you feel like you’re being pummeled with rocks. Cops here drive around at night with rifles to shoot the giant rats (nutria, they’re called) in the canals while the drug dealers hang out on street corners.

Oh, and there are alligators, too.

“This state is one big swamp, and it’s crawling with man-eating beasts!” I’d often prod him.

David would just laugh.

One day I came into work to find a scrap of newspaper in my chair. It was a photo of several law-enforcement personnel standing around something huge and unfriendly looking in the middle of a two-lane road. Traffic in both directions was stopped. One of the officers had a large stick, and was prodding the big thing with it. I did a double-take: That behemoth was an alligator!

The thing was sprawled at an angle across both lanes, sunning itself. It would have been even longer had something not lobbed off a good chunk of the end of its tail. The wound was long since healed over, and the old gator just looked more formidable because of it.

I scooped the clip up and marched it into David’s office. “You see what I mean?” I said. “You’ve got vicious monsters here! They’re even shutting down your roads! Not even your drivers are safe!”

Again, David just laughed.

“You obviously haven’t read the caption,” he said.

I looked again at the clipping in my hand, and this time my jaw fell open. Turns out the picture was taken not in Louisiana, or even anywhere in the vicinity. No, the photo was shot somewhere within the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, along U.S. 64, one of the two main roads to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

“What’s the matter?” David asked. “Gator got your tongue?”

– Frank