Huntin' Gators

I KID YOU NOT. I went to an alligator hunt. Normally I would not feel compelled to drive three hours and hang out at a wildlife ranger station in the dead of night, but that's the kind of dedicated cultural liaison that I am.

Here's the scoop: it's illegal to hunt alligators in Mississippi normally; but two weekends out of the year, the Dept of Wildlife and Fisheries grants permission to a select few. They have a hunter's "raffle" of sorts: anyone with a valid sportsman's license can enter for a chance to gain possession of one of 120 alligator "tags." Each tag allows up to two boats of up to five people on each boat the opportunity to go out spotlighting on the Ross Barnett Reservoir from 6:00 PM - midnight for a Fri/Sat/Sun trio. Each tag allows for 2 gators: one 4-7 foot and one 7 foot and above. They have rangers and biologists on hand to gather the length, width, etc. data. At most, they will thus gather 240 alligators; and trust me, we've got that many to spare down here.

This year they had over 1000 entries. One family I met even entered their nine month old son's name to have another chance to win a tag, seeing as how his sportsman's license was already set up. They had this child at the ranger station that night. He may have been wearing camouflage footie pajamas...

My mom found out about this whole shin-dig from one of our lakehouse neighbors, Sherry, who was our official guide to the ranger station where the "bringin' in o' the gators" took place. We followed her there at about 9:30 on a Saturday night. (Welcome to my social life in Mississippi. Don't be bitter just because you're jealous.)

There was already a small crowd of about a dozen or so, gathered around a red pick-up truck parked in front of the weighing pulley. And there, lining almost the entire interior perimeter of the truckbed was a 12-ft alligator. It was dead (otherwise tying it to the pulley and weighing it would have been extremely difficult). It weighed in at 463 lbs. - "underweight", according to the men gathered around the truck.

Here is the tale of the catch, best as I can recount it from two of the hunters themselves: Baseball Cap Man (couldn't see his face well because of the spotlights at the station) and Paul.

BCM: "We'd been out fer a while, and then Paul saw this un's bubble trail. So, we tossed the line over and caught him right away. Took us 'bout two hours to catch 'im, but he took the bait real quick; it was the rest of it that took so long. Now, Davey'd told us that if they're underwater fer more 'n an hour, they're prob'ly day-ud ('dead'), and he was under for most of an hour an a half. So, we'd figured he was long gone. We started pullin' 'im up, and turns out we had 'im snagged through thuh tay-ul ('tail')! I dunno' how we kept 'im on the lihne, but he stayed ohn. So, we're haulin' 'im up, thinkin' he's done drowned; an' his back feet hit that boat ramp, an' his legs tensed up, an' I tell ya', HE COME TO LIHFE. I yelled, 'Paul, get the gun! Get the gun!', 'n he [the alligator] is draggin' me in the water up to my thighs..."

At this point "Paul" cuts in, laughing, "Yeah, I was takin' pictures! I finally put the camera down and grabbed the bow, but the arrow bounced right off his hay-ud ('head'). [Reporter's commentary: Paul should have watched more Discovery Channel as a kid. Alligators developed all that armor for a reason.] So I threw that down and got the 410, and that took him out."

By the way, a "410" is a shotgun. (My mom had to tell me. Don't ask.)

As proof of their story, there was a snag in the back of the gator's tail, a shotgun "scar" through his head; and a circumstantial nick across his skull that may or may not have come from Reservoir Warrior Paul's hunter's bow and arrow.

My mom asked, "What are y'all going to do with it?" "Oh, we'll eat it," they all agreed, nodding in confirmation, "Grill it, fry it..." * "But what will you do with it tonight?" (My mom has never been a fan of letting things sit out overnight.) BCM shrugged, "Oh, we'll put it in a cooler - someone's volunteered one already." My mom and I looked at each other, looked down at the 12-ft alligator, did the traditional Southern female mental calculations of "How much freezer space do we have?" and looked back at each other, eyebrows furrowed. Mom asked uncertainly, "How big of a cooler is it?" BCM sort of cocked his head and answered very matter-of-factly, "It's a walk-in, ma'am." Naturally.

We heard rumors that a 13-footer had been caught and was headed to the station; but by close to midnight, Mom and I were tired and ready to go, even though only one other small gator had arrived. We called it a night. I know, I know -- gator hunt sissies. We were newbies, though; next time we'll be ready. Heck we may be there -- Frankie wants to enter next year. Shocker.

Did I mention they caught the 12-footer not far from where our lakehouse is? Who wants to come visit?

* Yes, I've eaten alligator before. It tastes like chicken.

Status Report

Tonight's score: Toads: 1. Spiders: 0.

By the way, it was Ethel. :]

Sometimes it's just not Debbie Reynolds

As has been mentioned many times, my brother and I were both Discovery Channel kids. We spent our entire childhood catching frogs and toads and lizards and things. I have noticed a couple of toads that appear every now and then onto the walkway right outside my front door. I assume they live in the flowerbed (or, thanks to the drought, the flower deathbed). Sometimes if I flip on the front light and peek out the front door very quickly, I can see them before they hop away into the darkness. They make me happy -- I don't want to catch them (anymore); I just like knowing that they're there. And, no, I haven't done something ridiculous and girly like naming them...

So, anyway, tonight before going to bed, I went out to look for Fred and Ethel (I mean, the toads), and what do I see? Not Fred. Not Ethel. I see... my mortal enemy. My nemesis. My, "No, not that! Anything but that! I'll talk! I'll talk!" That darn eight-legged consigliere of the devil himself stupid sitting right outside my stupid front door.

My brother, the braver of us two, would have said "It's just a stupid little wolf spider." True that. It definitely wasn't the biggest wolf spider I've ever seen. (I still see that one in my sleep.) But it was big enough. (I have a firm belief that any spider bigger than a silver dollar should be restricted to the jungle. Or possibly Australia.) And it was looking. At. My. House.

Most people would say, "Just leave him alone; let him eat the bugs." However, most people do not have my instinctive reaction to spiders of climbing on top of the nearest piece of furniture (or nearest person) and screaming for help. Ergo, "leaving him alone" is not really an option for me if I ever want to sleep, nap, blink, or generally have a regular heartbeat within these walls in the near future. I do have a rule that as long as spiders stay in their territory (I.e., "outside"), that's fair. But when they invade my territory (I.e., "inside"), then we're gonna' have a fight. This one was close enough.

I closed the door, put on my tennis shoes, pulled my hair back, and armed myself appropriately. Weapons of choice: bug spray in one hand; Lysol in the other. [Nota Bene: The story of "How to Use Lysol As a Defense Against Spiders" may be retold in a follow-up post.] I opened the door gently. He was still there. I carefully stepped waaaaaay over him, pulled the door shut behind me, pivoted on tiptoe, and assumed a "graffiti warrior" yoga pose, facing the enemy.

I hit him with the bug spray, careful not to spray so close as to knock him towards the door. He didn't flinch. I hit him with the Lysol. Some ants scattered from underneath him. He barely twitched. I thought, "Is he dead already? Did the ants already get to him, and he just hasn't curled up or something?"

Spiders don't have normal lungs like most animals do: they have "book lungs". They work more like gills than lungs, really. I'm telling you, I watched a lot of Discovery Channel. Plus, as Sun Tsu would say, "Know your enemy..."

Sorry, Discovery nerd tangent. The point is that spiders don't breathe like we do. So I waited a few seconds, trying to calculate the potential absorption rate of chemicals into his system. He didn't do much. I sprayed again, alternating cans. He moved towards the wall, but not too quickly. I sprayed again; and at this point I had sprayed enough that as the human being with normal lungs, I had to take a step back and refresh my own oxygen supply.

Maybe it was the rush of clean oxygen, but it somewhere in this mix I realized that those ants were awfully tiny. And didn't really move like ants. And weren't really shaped like ants. Oh, no, no, no, no, NO...

For the non-Discovery kids out there, I should mention here that wolf spiders often carry their newly hatched young on their backs. He was a she. And she had babies. Many babies. Whiiiiiine...

The conclusion of this story is that "she" is officially dead. Confirmed. And my front stoop is wet with Lysol and bug spray in my attempt to drown any other living book-lunged creature in that area. I felt kind of bad, taking out a mom. I mean, I read Charlotte's Web when I was little; and I cried when Charlotte died and Wilbur the pig had to raise her babies. (Like pigs do in children's stories.) But Charlotte was sort of an idealistic, abstract animal who in her most concrete form lived in two dimensions and sang pretty songs in Debbie Reynolds's voice. That was not who was sitting on my front doorstep tonight.

As I've said before, the great thing about phobias is that they don't have to make any sense. I really can't be certain that I got rid of the all of the teeny-tiny baby spiders. Statistically speaking, I'm fairly confident that I didn't. So, I'll probably be sleeping with some lights on tonight. Maybe I should watch the Charlotte's Web cartoon movie for a little positive therapy. I'm pretty sure The Discovery Channel would not be a good idea.