Adorable Child has a friend visiting from up North for a couple of days who has never seen an alligator “in the wild” (her words).
Now, we have alligators all over the place here. I see them in the local bayous all the time, and AC’s friends often talk about the time a gator was at the school bus stop. (Supposedly, “somebody” was called, and they came out and shot it in front of the kids. Sounds like a highly embellished tale to me…).
Unfortunately, I can’t count on alligators sauntering up out of the local ditches on demand… but I was pretty sure I could deliver many wild gators if we went to Brazos Bend State Park.
Sadly, what we saw mostly yesterday were algae-covered turtles — Red Eared Sliders, to be precise.
Okay… and we saw lots of birds. This is probably some kind of warbler, but they all look pretty much alike to me.
But the reason we didn’t see many alligators wasn’t because they weren’t out there. (They were!) The problem was that no matter how many times I tried to tell them that they had to actually walk to see them out in the lakes and swamps, they couldn’t rouse themselves to that much effort.
I vaguely remember this stage in my life, when going anywhere with Mom was a chore, and all I really wanted to do was sleep. In fact, I think I’m grateful nobody recorded my total lack of energy for posterity!
No doubt I should have just left them there, eh? Eventually a grumpy alligator might have strolled up and chomped on one of them.
*sigh*