You betcha!
I live on a lagoon in South Carolina and in the lagoon is an 8 foot long creature called an
alligator. He is so sneaky. He moves very slowly through the water with only his nose
and his big eyeballs showing. He looks slow, but he's only trying to get you to come closer
so he can jump out of the lagoon, grab your leg and stuff you under the bank of the lagoon
so he can eat you later. I know how these devils work.
I was out one morning checking on our alligator and an old, old woman came by. She saw
me looking at the gator so she came over and said, "Be careful. Those things are fast. They
can run as fast as a galloping horse."
I looked at her and said, "You know I have a feeling that if that alligator was chasing me, I could run faster than a galloping horse...by a good bit."
She said earnestly, "You have to zig-zag. They can run fast for about 50 yards, but they
have trouble zigging and zagging. So you zig-zag as much as you can."
I asked her if she had outrun any alligators and she just held up two arms and said, "I still
have both of my arms don't I?"
I have always remembered her warnings. So far I haven't out to outwit an alligator. I have to
walk with a cane now, so my plan is to hit the sucker in the head as soon as he makes a
move toward me.
An alligator down here actually ate an old woman last year. I sort of wondered if it was the
person who had given me life-saving instruction. She might have zagged instead of zigged.
Signs are posted everywhere down here no to feed the alligators. But tourists are fascinated
by the things and they feed them no matter what the signs say. An alligator remembers forever where he has been fed, so they keep coming back to that spot. And if they see a
person outdoors they just figure it is dinner time.
They will eat anything, too. They have found all kinds of strange things in alligator bellies:
cigarette lighters, coke bottles, tin cans, other alligators, baby toys. They are scavengers.
They're like Billy Goats (except it is not true that goats eat tin cans...when you see pictures
of them with cans, they are trying to eat the paper off the cans and lick the glue...the alligators eat cans!)
Alligators hate poodles. They hate their bark which is rather high pitched. So they catch a lot of poodles. When they catch their prey, they hold them under water until they drown.
That's when they can safely tuck them under the bank of the lagoon and come back later to
eat them. There's a lot of poodle fuzz in my lagoon. I can appreciate why alligators might
want to eat them. Poodles are cute but they are so bossy. I had friends who had a poodle.
The dog hated my guts. He growled at me the whole time I would visit them. And all because I suggested that they might want to have him stuffed and made into a nice foot
stool. He understood every word I said, even though I told him that I didn't mean "now" but
after he croaked. He loved to chase female dogs...he was ancient but when he was on the
move, he could jump a 5 foot high fence to get into see his girlfriend. But then he didn't have
the energy to jump back across to go home. The neighbors would have to call and tell my
friends to come get Casanova.
