Buy Peanut Oil and Breading, in Self-Defense

Did you ever have one of those mornings when your brain feels like it has been replaced by a big ball of lead? That happens to me about five days a week.

I am imbibing medication right now, and as I have often done in the past, I will blog while it takes effect.

Let's start with something easy. Alligator stories.

Holy shnikies! Did I spell that right? There is a veritable crapucopia of reptile stories in the news.

Let's see. Steve Irwin, God love him, has managed to squirm his way back into the public eye. Evidently, there is a rogue alligator loose in a lake in LA, and he is going to help capture it. The story says the city has already spent $125,000 trying to nail this thing. It's wonderful to see how much California politicians are willing to spend to locate, detain, and remove illegal intruders from exotic locations. As long as they don't have relatives who vote.

Steve Irwin is an idiot. Let's get that part out of the way right up front. It amazes me that people take issue when I say that. I guess I'm judgmental, but you only have to feed a crocodile while holding a newborn baby under your arm once to convince me that not all of your shrimps are securely on the barbie.

I don't think I've ever heard a woman defend him. I mean, a woman who wasn't insane enough to marry him. Men will seriously say things like, "Dude, he's a crocodile EXPERT. He knows what he's doing." Men say that because we don't see the loss of a baby as a big deal. You can always make more of them, and usually, we didn't want them in the first place. Listen, if Steve Irwin fed a crocodile while dangling a new PlayStation or even a hot pizza under his arm, men would be in hysterics. Because those are things that matter. When you endanger a man's newborn child, the man's first thought is something like, "Now I can move my weight bench into the nursery."

The thing I love about doofuses who play with sharks and crocodiles and so on for a living is that they base their "work" on the implicit assumption that you can predict the behavior of an animal with a brain the size of a gerbil's willy. And of course, they're absolutely and completely wrong. Have you ever seen the famous Internet video of the Asian "crocodile expert" who fed his arm to a crocodile in front of a crowd of cheering tourists? Check it out and come back and tell me Steve Irwin isn't an assclown. It's really something. This guy gets a huge crocodile to sit a foot away from him with its mouth open--that right there tells you the man is a genius who ought to be designing Mars probes for NASA--and then he puts his hand in the crocodile's mouth and LOOKS AWAY.

And the crocodile clamps down and starts spinning, and the arm comes off, and the audience, being Asian, sets off a roar of camera-shutter clicks.

It's amazing how fast a lizard the size of a Porsche Cayenne can spin. The Asian guy was young and wiry, and he was highly motivated to spin as fast as the crocodile and keep his arm from twisting off, and the crocodile spun like four times to his one. But for the grace of God, Irwin's crocodile would have done the same thing with Irwin's kid in its mouth. When crocodiles feel like it, they run faster than people, and they can even jump fairly well. And Steve Irwin is not exactly Carl Lewis.

So, yes, he's an idiot.

I am wondering if the kid will figure into his LA strategy. Maybe he'll smear it with peanut butter and chain it to a pole beside the lake. Keep an eye on Youtube.

When Irwin emerged on the scene, provoking cobras and stroking startled lizards, I thought it was swell that a guy with no education had done so well for himself, without harming anyone except for a few dozen irate reptiles. But my opinion swung sharply to the negative when he started using his own children as bait. Regardless of the potential positive effect on the gene pool.

Here's another fun story. An eight-foot gator was just captured in the Florida town of Indialantic. What a Florida-sounding place name. Indialantic's gator was hanging out in a stand of trees, waiting for lunch to jog by.

The funny thing about this story is the stupid things the authorities said. Example: ""It was kind of a shock to see an alligator." That peculiar remark comes from Scott Behringer of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. Apparently, Scott doesn't read Fark, watch TV, or go outdoors without some sort of a blindfold. I live in the biggest city in the state, and I'm not in law enforcement, and I'm not even slightly shocked to see alligators. Or iguanas or macaws or waterspouts or fifty giant South American millipedes all trying to climb up the side of my garage at the same instant. Scott also says, "It wasn't aggressive, at least not until the alligator trapper showed up." Yes, Scott, a change of mood like that often occurs when a beer-smelling guy in a baseball cap lunges from a beat-up pickup truck and wraps his legs around you.

It's amazing how many people are trapping problem gators for a living now. I think I see a job opportunity. But unlike these amateurs, I'd do it right. They get in the water and wrestle and fight with the gators. I'd get myself a big metal syringe and mount it on the end of a pool-cleaning pole and inject the gator's heads full of Liquid Plum'r when no one was looking. People would be like, "Damn, Steve gets those gators in the truck quick and easy. But they don't seem too lively afterward."

This is encouraging. Huge armored lizards are now invading Florida playgrounds. And we're not just seeing crocodiles and alligators now. We are now getting South American caimans. Once again, the authorities have the situation sized up. Says Lewis Delgado, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, "This is an exotic [animal]. Somebody must have had it as a pet a long time ago and released it because it got too big." Thanks, Lewis. It's a comfort to know they're not walking here from South America.

The owner of the playground had some inspiring input, too. She said "her biggest concern was the children's safety." That's good to hear, because a lot of people would have been more concerned about damage to the flowerbeds.

It looks like Steve Irwin has competition in the competition to be the Shockley Nobel Laureate Sperm Bank Donor of the Year. A guy in Hobe Sound was arrested for driving around with a dead gator strapped to the front of his ATV. I'm no career criminal, but one thing I have learned is that when you commit a crime, your best bet is not to drive around with the evidence strapped to the exterior of your vehicle.

Better still, when the guy saw the cops coming, he took the gator by its hind legs and did the Florida version of the hammer throw. But as the story says, "The four-foot alligator flew eight feet high and spun 360 degrees but landed only about three feet away." I just don't know what to say about that. It appears that this guy, though perfectly capable of throwing a tiny four-foot gator, has a problem distinguishing "up" from "sideways."

Here's the passage I like best. "But FWC Maj. Brett Norton said they believed Smith when he denied shooting the reptile because his pants were wet." That's a good thing to know, if you're ever pulled over by the cops in Hobe Sound. This is probably the only jurisdiction in which a suspect's credibility is actually enhanced by wet pants.

Meanwhile, a deputy in Port Charlotte has been cleared of charges in the shooting of a gator that charged him in his backyard. No word on the condition of his pants.

Gator fatalities are really mounting. Good old Local6 says--in its "Sports" section--that authorities lassoed and then killed a ten-foot gator in a swamp in Ormond Beach. They lassoed it, dragged it away, and THEN killed it "because it was considered dangerous." Evidently the Fish and Game people are now restricting their new hires to Mensa members. Am I insane, or is the correct order of business 1. kill, 2. drag away?

The story says the gator scared families who were "crabbing" nearby. So I guess when they saw the gator, they got on the phone and started crabbing to the authorities.

This is fun: "A teenager who spotted the gator said it wasn't coming after him, but it was still too close for comfort." Right away, I can tell you this kid has fifteen nose rings and pants with the seat hanging between his knees. Right away, I can tell you that Harvard is not after this boy. I guess I'm a genius, because I figured the following out all by myself: when you are too close to a giant reptile for comfort, MOVE FARTHER AWAY.

I am available in case MIT or the Rand Corporation needs a new giant brain.

Finally, it looks like Steve Irwin has scared the gators so bad they're moving to Idaho. The cops in a town called Caldwell found one walking down the street. Isn't Idaho where the Aryan Nation nuts hang out? Gators must prefer white meat.

The guy who spoke for the cops is named "Dennis Schat." Imagine the jokes this guy gets. "Dennis Schat? Well he better clean it up."

The story says, "But until someone claims ownership, Fish and Game officers will try to find the gator a new home." I have a home for it. A shiny stainless steel home. Connected to a hundred-pound propane tank. Send him on over. I'll make sure he's real comfortable.

I think that's all the gator stories for the last nine hours or so. I'll keep my eyes peeled in case any new ones pop up before lunch.