My Fault, I Guess

Laurence Simon says The Good, the Spam and the Ugly caused him to lose control of his bodily functions. Thanks, Laurence! Although this isn't going to get you that Pajamateer of the Month prize I know you were counting on.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:04 PM | Permalink  

For Serious Scholars Only

It has been over a week since I have had time to update my vital coverage of news stories involving alligators. Since that time, innumerable gator reports have saturated the news. It may take quite a while to deal with the backlog.

First off, if--like thousands of typical Americans--you're going to state fairs in order to buy your own live alligator, please stop. Unless you want a federal beef on your hands. Uncle Sam's jackbooted thugs, no longer content to monitor our innocent phone calls to Al Qaeda operatives and spy on harmless wire transfers from Saudi banks to Western Union franchises in the mountains of Pakistan, are now coming after our recreational alligators.

I don't know about you, but as for me, they will get my alligator when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Or retrieve it piecemeal from my garbage cans and turkey fryer basket.

Like the Constitution says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear alligators and other enormous man-eating reptiles, shall not be infringed. Crikey."

Actually, it's not the feds, but it sounds more exciting when you pretend it's a national crisis and not a local kerfuffle perpetrated by doughnut-ivorous state employees.

Some guy named Jason Johnson was exhibiting alligators and other reptiles at the Illinois State Fair, when a SWAT team from the Peoria Animal Welfare Shelter (which has the hilarious acronym "PAWS") descended from the ceiling on black nylon ropes and confiscated his inventory. They got the job because no one answered the phone at the Animal Salvation Society (ASS), the Consolidated League of Animal Protectors (CLAP), or the Fraternity of Animal Rights Theorists (FART).

Evidently, Jason (or another alligator "vendor") was handing out flyers advertising alligators. Imagine how infuriating it has to be, to be a parent at the fair and have your whiny ten-year-old son get a hold of one of these things. When I was a kid and we used to drive from Florida to Kentucky in the summer, I nagged my parents incessantly until they pulled over and let me buy fireworks for blowing up lizards (durka durka Mohammed etc.) or itch powder to put down the back of my sister's shirt (it works). I can only guess how insufferable I would have been had I seen a sign advertising live alligators. Or hand grenades. Or surplus .50-caliber machine guns. Every time I travel by car, I keep an eye out for those.

The fuzz got wise to Jason's game when some goof called a local vet to say the alligator he had bought at the fair was refusing to eat its usual morning ration of Van Camp's Beanee Weenee®. Something like that. The vet ratted the customer out and then had the gall to refuse the alligator treatment.

This is ridiculous. We live in an enlightened age where I can knock up your thirteen-year-old daughter (or in Alabama, wife) and then take her to a drive-thru abortion mill where--I think--they poke the Shop-Vac right through the drive-up window, and she doesn't even have to ask your permission. But a man seeking badly needed veterinary treatment for a constipated companion alligator is turned away at the door and forced to go into a back alley and remove the impaction with a coat hanger. Is that justice? Is that what Thomas Jefferson and those other old dudes with wigs intended when they drew up the Bill of Rights? Hell, no. My alligator, my choice, bitches.

When alligator constipation treatment is outlawed, only outlaws will have constipated alligators. Or something. Don't make me connect all the dots again. Learn to think for yourselves. Provided that in the end you find yourself in total agreement with everything I say.

Here's a pointless quote which I will throw in to take up space:

Sgt. Tim Sickmeyer, acting chief of the DNR's investigation unit, said Johnson needs a specific permit to possess an American alligator because they are listed on the federal endangered species list as a threatened animal.

"Threatened"? The sick alligator is threatened all right. It faces the threat of an improperly administered enema. I think the vet should be forced to have one, too. That's what King Solomon would have done. Or maybe he would have cut the alligator in half. And had it made into the most pimp-ass tefillen ever seen on the Temple Mount. He'd be out there in his alligator tefillen, davening with a forty in his free hand. Getting his royal crunk on.

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his crunk-ass glory and FUBU alligator tefillen was not arrayed like one of these sportin' biznitches.

I'll bet if you look in the Talmud, there's probably a story in there about some lady who rolled on her alligator and suffocated it while she slept and then stole some other lady's alligator and pretended it was hers. Some big fat bitch who ate rugelach and latkes all day. Bitch like that doesn't deserve her own alligator anyway.

Am I digressing?

I guess it would be Eric the half a gator.

I love this swamp employee...bisected accidentally...one summer's afternoon, by me...I love him...carnally.

I'm back now.

Johnson swears he runs a righteous operation, but the state people have their own argument, which is, "We are the government and we can do anything we want." They say he hasn't presented his Alligator Emporium Permit, but he counters, somewhat convincingly, that he can't do that because they refuse to answer the phone or tell him where they are. They probably don't want to get doughnut glaze all over the receiver.

This is how government work works. When called, don't answer. When confronted in person, don't make eye contact. When held down and sat on by an angry citizen, promise the world, then lie back and think of doughnuts. Until he goes away.

In the meantime, no one will tell him where the alligator is. Somewhere under a mountain in Colorado, there's probably a big room containing hundreds of confiscated gators, ten pallets of vodka, several dozen delicious Asian hookers, a gigantic vibrating circular bed that rotates, and Vice President Richard B. Cheney. The real one. Not the animatronic bot that malfunctioned and shot that guy in the face.

Just a guess.

Looks like I got off track a little and gave the Johnson story a little too much coverage, so I guess you'll have to wait until tomorrow to read my penetrating analysis of the story of the guy who got bitten on the ankle.

But trust me. I'm all over this stuff.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:12 AM | Permalink  

One Mime is One Mime Too Many

It's remarkable how much more often alligators make the news than crocodiles.

Take today for example. I checked the crocodile news after a week of ignoring it, and all I found was one ho-hum item about someone being eaten and another one about a kid gettting bitten after seeking out a crocodile and showing his ass. But gators fill the news every day.

I might as well cover the biting story first. Some kid in the Philippines went to the home of a nut case who had a pet crocodile, and he threw rocks at it until it bit him on the arm. I know what all you older males are thinking as you read that. "Good for the crocodile." This is what happens to unsupervised, snot-nosed yard apes who don't know enough to STAY THE HELL OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S YARDS.

By the way, "yard ape" isn't a racial term. Unless trash is a race.

Women will see it differently because they think with their ovaries and want to mommy everyone. They will wonder why the Philippine authorities don't have crocodile social workers to go around to people's houses and train their crocodiles to be vegans and make them watch Oprah. Who, herself, would make a fine meal for a crocodile. Or even a herd of them, depending on the phase of the Oprah Diet Pendulum.

Women will support the parents' lawsuit against the poor deranged crocodile owner, because a) he is male, and b) he did something weird and interesting. I.e., keeping a crocodile. Whenever you do anything that isn't related to shopping, reproduction, or home maintenance, women look at you like you have three heads. Women would be the most boring people imaginable. If they didn't have breasts.

The way I see it, you consent to anything that happens to you when you are in my yard without permission. And I do mean "anything." And you are not excused merely because there is an emergency or because you are delivering the newspaper or if you can't understand the consequences of your actions because you are a cat. So step lively, keep low, and if apprehended, be polite. I have lots of guns, and as I have pointed out in earlier pieces, I know websites where I can order my own crocodiles.

From your standpoint, the world can be divided roughly into three zones. 1. The Safe Zone. This is your house and yard, where you are safe from me unless you run there for sanctuary while carrying an item which belongs to me. 2. The Neutral Zone. This is other people's property, public land, international waters, and foreign countries. Here you are usually safe from me. Moreso if there are witnesses present. 3. The Zone of Certain Death, i.e. my yard. By entering the Zone of Certain Death, you forfeit all expectation of safety and common courtesy, and the right not to be be blasted forcefully by sprinklers connected to a motion sensor.

Learn the Three Zone System, and we will get along fine. Otherwise, have your affairs in order and say hello to my little friend. Jimbo the non-vegan mail-order crocodile.

Stories like this show why God gives kids two arms. Kids do stupid things constantly, and if they really screw up, God wants them to have one arm left. To do chores with.

That about wraps it up for crocodile news. But gators keep making their way into the headlines. This weekend, Florida authorities have decided to shift their focus from rapes, murders, robberies, arson, and hassling minorities to mount a sting--their word--aimed at people who give sandwiches and Ring Dings to alligators.

Thank God. Now we can all sleep soundly at night and leave our front doors unlocked.

Evidently, it works like this. An alligator shows up in your yard, and you and the kids think it's cute, so you toss it a Pop Tart or some equally nutritious item, and soon the alligator starts to think of humans as little pink food trees, and then it gets tired of waiting for the food to fall off by itself. And then you put down your newspaper and look down toward the end of the chaise lounge and see an alligator attached to your foot. To prevent this from happening, the state takes the alligator off in a truck and gives it a lethal injection. Of warm lead. And they write you a ticket.

And this is important enough to take law enforcement officers away from essential work like tasing mimes.

God, I hate a damn mime. I think I'll write a movie about a superhero who kills mimes. I'll call him the Mime Sweeper. "Man in an Imaginary Box"? How about "Man in a Very Real Box at the Bottom of my Swimming Pool"?

I hate Michael Jackson, and he's one coat of whitewash away from being a full-blown mime. He moonwalks, doesn't he? Where do you think he got that?

It's no wonder he's a pedophile. All mimes have that tendency. They're practically the same thing as clowns, and what do clowns do for a living? Work children's birthday parties. Connect the dots, people. That's all the evidence I need. When are we going to have sensible laws mandating the chemical castration of all mimes? I guess when we get done jailing trailer residents for giving alligators food-stamp Butterfingers.

Crusty the alligator is the first victim of the state's bizarre insistence on persecuting gator-feeders while mime batons and mime spike strips gather dust in police station armories. Crusty is eight feet long, and he likes Ho Hos. So now he must die.

Crusty lives in a canal beside Alligator Alley, a road whose very name seems to indicate that he has a right to be there. They were originally going to call it "Huge Rattlesnake Draped Across the Road Alley," but the legislature didn't want to set a bad precedent by telling tourists the truth. People who are apparently even more trifling and idle than I am drive to see Crusty to throw him Hostess pies and Gummy Bears. They're happy. Crusty is happy. But the state is going to croak him anyway, because they know it won't be long before he becomes unable to detect the subtle differences between the human arm and Little Caesar's Crazy Bread.

Fort Lauderdale resident Jeffrey Bush, at the unbelievable age of 43, says he does not deserve the ticket he got for throwing fish "at" Crusty. Says Bush, "I wasn't really trying to feed the dumb animal. I was just throwing stuff at him to get him to move and one of those things happened to be a fish." Good defense, Jeff. So you weren't making a misguided but good-natured attempt to do Crusty a favor. You were trying to bean him for the joy of causing him pain. In Zone 2, the Neutral Zone, no less. The judge is going to be real impressed. I can hear him now. "And let me give you a piece of advice, young man, before you put on your orange vest and spend the next four weekends picking up dog crap in front of the courthouse. The next time you torment an innocent creature for your own sick pleasure, you make goddamn sure it's in Zone 1."

Right now I'm wondering where they'll dispose of Crusty's remains. Because you know a gator fed out on pecan twirls and Long John Silver's is going to be tender and tasty.

I wonder if law enforcement types are going to extend their logic into other areas. For example, will they start ticketing business owners who give police officers free doughnuts? It starts out innocently enough. A guy who owns a Krispy Kreme comps cop lunches so they'll hang around and repel crackheads. Then the first thing you know, a cop gets confused and bites a clerk's arm off. And then Steve Irwin shows up and lures the cop into a van, with a box of bear claws under one arm and a newborn under the other. "Crikey, 'ave a go at THIS beauty! Oi should have brought twins!"

Once again, the authorities are spreading their wisdom. They explain why Crusty has to be executed instead of being relocated to a suitable area such as a lake in downtown Los Angeles or a culvert in Oregon.

Officer Jorge Pino said the alligators can't be relocated once they've been desensitized to humans because they are territorial and it could upset the balance of nature elsewhere.

Also, it means driving all the way to the Everglades instead of to the dump. But I can see what he means. Adding a strange alligator to the careful system of alligator territories and boundaries which is the fetid swamp we call the Everglades would be like carelessly introducing a bunch of Miami Metro cops into a doughnut shop frequented by the Broward Sheriff's Office. During mating season.

Cop mating season is quite a spectacle here in South Florida. The male cops lie on the canal banks, gaping their jaws and making throaty roars in order to attract females. Unfortunately, lady cops being what they so often are, they're generally doing the same thing.

If we keep killing alligators for eating fast food, soon alligators in South Florida will be just like cops. They will always be around, except when you really need one.

Or something.

Anyway, to show my displeasure, I'm boycotting doughnuts. Until about twenty minutes ago.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:27 PM | Permalink  

Except for Big Al

Gator stories are plopping out onto the national scene like burrito wrappers out the windows of Michael Moore's stretch Escalade.

Where do I start?

How about this: the Post Office has come up with a new alligator stamp. It was officially dedicated yesterday in a ceremony "on the edge of the Everglades," i.e., in a perfectly ordinary suburb between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Some guy from the Flamingo Gardens botanical garden and wildlife sanctuary was there, and he was asked to bring a baby alligator, which had the highly original name "Gator Joe." Personally, I wouldn't have bothered inviting this guy. I would have walked over and plucked a gator from the nearest ditch.

I'm against the alligator stamp. I'm against anything that puts violent images in the disordered minds of postal workers. I think we need stamps with photos of clouds and ducks and warm fuzzy puppies and kitties on them. Or how about stamps showing photos of the families of other postal workers? You could caption them, "Don't do it. They have children."

Hey, here's an idea:

It's kind of fitting that the Postal Service would have a stamp featuring a fat, sluggish, stupid animal that takes a huge bite and rarely moves except to kill something.

Here's proof that real news is slow in coming these days. Click the link and read the thrilling story, "Residents Say Ditch Has Alligators." It comes to us from Winter Haven, Florida.

Here are some typically weird quotes:

"Gators travel at night like they're the ones who pay taxes instead of us," said Ruby Thomas, who lives on Palm Drive Northeast.

"The alligators walk the area at will," said Hattie Wilson, president of the Northeast Neighborhood Association.

Hasn't ANYTHING happened in July in Winter Haven? Is life in Florida really this dull? I better keep my eye on The Miami Herald; I may be in there soon. "Steve Contemplates Scratching Backside; Reluctantly Concludes Effort not Justified."

The obvious mistake the locals are making is going to politicians for help, more than a month away from an election. You don't go to politicians and cops and so on and ask them to clear out the gators. You go out at night, kill the gators yourselves, have a barbecue, and when the authorities and politicians finally show up to pretend they care, go "Gators? Here?"

I'll tell you a secret about law enforcement types. They don't care if you break the law, as long as they don't know about it. They just want their free fast food and their pensions and doughnuts, so kill your own gators and keep it on the down low. It's all good.

In Hilton Head, South Carolina, a seven-foot alligator lying in the road was run down by a car.

I'll give you ten seconds to guess the sex of the driver. Men can be stupid about things like washing their sheets and picking their noses while driving, but only a woman can accidentally run over a grown alligator. "Accidentally," I say.

Says the story, "The woman that was driving the car that hit the gator is okay but the gater was badly injured and had to be put down."

"Gater"?

Of course the woman was okay. But her cell phone fell and got nail polish remover in the earpiece and had to be destroyed. Fortunately, EMTs kept her on life support while they rushed her to a Cingular store for a life-saving transplant.

If a woman can run down a huge green reptile in broad daylight, what chance do you and I have? We have to do something to make ourselves more visible. Like taping really expensive shoes to our foreheads. That will get their attention.

You want proof that journalists are lazy morons who only leap into action to cover stories other people have already found? Here it is. The Winter Haven gator epidemic has been written up in in Tampa. The story is almost as boring as the original, but the quotes are better. Here you go.

Melinda McArthur, Palm Drive Resident: “Oh they big, they real big. ”

Also:

Melinda McArthur, Palm Drive Resident: “I don't like reptiles. I don't like anything that might be faster than me.”

I think we need to send Melinda a Segway. Although speaking as a Republican and former scientist, I am loath to interfere with the process of Natural Selection. Anyway, she would probably just ride it back and forth to the liquor store. Or straight to the liquor store and then in lazy circles terminating in a nearby hedge.

I think I'll close with another "Big Al" item. Remember "Big Al"? No, not South Park's "Big Gay Al." No, not "Big Al," the guy who owns the chain of stores where I pay good money for dirt to fill my aquarium. Big Al the Largest Captive Gator in Texas. According to Gator Country owner Gary Saurage. Who, I'll bet anything, hasn't measured any other alligators.

It turns out Saurage may have a pretty decent trademark-infringement suit. Because some flake in California is touring with a gator named "Big Al." Only this "Big Al" is four feet long.

I would suggest an alternative name. Such as "Puny Al." Or "Big Al Lite." Or a tribute to Native Americans: "Little Big Al."

Here's the odd thing. Little Big Al is part of an event called "Rainforest Experience." That would be fine, if alligators came from rain forests. But they don't. Unless someone has snuck around and planted a rain forest somewhere between Miami and Brownsville.

This is a fraudulent deal all the way around. Big Al is small. The "Rainforest Experience" features an animal collected in a culvert in West Palm Beach. The perpetrator ought to be dragged to a liquor store behind Melinda McArthur's Segway.

Okay, it's after twelve, which means it's time to quit writing about Thorazine and start taking it. But don't worry. The gators aren't going anywhere.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:23 PM | Permalink  

Irwin Blindsided by "Bleedin' Texas Wanker"

Remember the other day how I told you to stay out of Eufaula, Alabama, if you didn't want to be eaten by alligators?

Once again--it's amazing how often this happens--fate has proven me right. According to The Eufaula Tribune, a gator tried to snarf down a delectable three-year-old over the weekend. It happened while the kid was playing by the water at the Eufaula Yacht Club, in the shadow of the stately aluminum jonboats.

By the way, I managed to scrounge up a photo of the yacht club.

Some guy who refuses to be identified says his son was screwing around near the water when a six-foot gator swam up, stood on its hind feet, began ringing a large dinner triangle, and asked for hush puppies and slaw. Something like that. The guy grabbed his son and gave the gator some ad hoc behavioral therapy by nailing it in the head with a big rock. So much for Gator Whispering. Animal psychology in the South is a whole different ballgame.

The story calls him "the local man, who asked not to be identified." What IS it with Southerners being perpetually embarrassed? Again, I am not referring to white trash, whose rudimentary brains lack the usual embarrassment and self-respect receptors. There are huge-breasted 300-pound men all over the South who go from May to September wearing the same pair of stained cutoffs and no shirt, even to weddings funerals, and bond hearings. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who own their own homes and who have never been arrested for things like driving a riding mower three miles the wrong way on an interstate highway to buy Bud Light and snuff.

Says Local Man, "If it had been two more seconds, I would have lost a child in the worst possible way." As contrasted with the good ways to lose a child. Like selling it to Michael Jackson for a handsome fee and a new bass boat. How come Steve Irwin never said anything like that after using his son as a makeshift crocodile Milkbone? Maybe it wasn't his son at all. Maybe it was a stunt, using a meatloaf painted to resemble a baby. Maybe Steve is a meatloaf, too. That would explain a lot.

A man with less presence of mind might have said something more revealing. Such as, "I am a towering mound of steaming dumbass." But I'm sure his wife pointed that out when he got home. About four million times. When that kid is cashing in his IRA, his mom will still be ending every argument with, "Well I'M not the one who tried to feed little Dewart to an alligator."

Local Man goes on: "The fact is, there needs to be an open season. A big open season. It's not going to take but one attack to kill the lake."

Or, just to play devil's advocate and propose a completely off-the-wall solution, maybe people could keep their three-year-olds away from hungry alligators.

You're not getting an open season, dude. Not unless we get one in Florida, too. Or you send us some tails to fry.

Why not use the kid to help round them up? A good fisherman always sticks with proven bait. Put it in a cage by the water, borrow your wife's machine gun (this IS Alabama), and pop the alligators as they try to chew through the bars. Or you could fall back on the traditional bait favored by rural Southern fishermen. Of course, I am referring to dynamite.

Here's more: "Despite the growing alligator population, it is still illegal to hunt alligators in Alabama on the banks of Lake Eufaula, according to Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Sgt. Aurora Thomas." Additionally, the kid's father has been fined for hunting alligators in a baited area.

They can't resist getting a little jab in. "There has never been a reported alligator attack that has resulted in a fatality in Alabama, but more than a dozen deaths in Florida can be linked to alligators." It's not our fault. Old Jews can't run very fast.

Officials had some helpful tips. Here's a good one. "Don't swim or wade if possible." In case you didn't get the memo, the alligators have won. You may no longer go in the water. When they start coming up in your yards, the state will advise you not to leave the house. When they come in the house, the state will tell you to stay in your room and keep the damn noise down.

Here's another one. "Stay at least 35 feet from an alligator on land." That's good advice. And to find out if you're 35 feet away, take a measuring tape and run it from your position to the alligator's nose. You'd be surprised how many people have been killed because the distance was more like 34 feet, 9 inches.

The Texas tourist attraction Gator Country is in the news again. When last we saw owner Gary Saurage, he was appearing in a death-defying Internet video in which he taunted and pimpslapped a ferocious gator which he carried to the scene in a coffee can. You know you're watching a lame gator show when the human is holding the gator's jaws closed with a bobby pin.

Saurage says to avoid provoking mom gators. That comes in handy. I was about to run outside and give one a wet willy. He says, "That mother alligator's not trying to eat you, make no mistake. She's just trying to protect that nest, and that means she's gonna try to bite you." He fails to point out that she may eat you incidentally.

I wouldn't pay too much attention. This is the same guy who recently told a reporter his egg-laying gators were "pregnant."

Saurage explains why he, and he alone, is able to handle gators without being harmed. ""I know the strike zones and what they're capable of doing. When I'm looking at that alligator and I'm gonna hand feed him, I'm looking for that foot placement. I want to know where those feet are." Also: "It helps if the gator is nine inches long and still has eggshell stuck to its back."

How do you learn about alligator "strike zones"? Wouldn't it be simpler to use the word "feet"?

Says Saurage, "On land, alligators can move at 30 miles per hour for short distances." "Or faster when chained to the bumper of my orange 1975 Chevy LUV with one green door."

This guy is a wellspring of scientifical facts. Look: "The reason is that an alligator will only strike when they're bloated up. That's where their energy comes from. After they exhale that, they're done."

Does he mean gators...or WOMEN? They're dangerous when they're bloated up, all right. Some men have to stay in motels several days a month.

Saurage had an explanation for the unpredictability of alligators. "'The reason being, that alligator's brain is about that big,' he said, displaying a pinkie nail." He then moved his finger down to cover half of the nail saying, "And here is my OWN brain."

In his quest for publicity, Saurage has resorted to talking smack about croc god Steve Irwin:

He went on to comment on Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, who raised an international furor by walking his month-old son near a large croc he was feeding during one of his shows.

"There's nothing smart about that," Saurage said.

"That's a no-no. That should not happen. That's a 16-foot croc that can move quicker than he can. If that croc had gotten hold of that kid, there would have been nothing he (Irwin) could have done about it.

"I know he knows those things like I know these alligators, but if you think I'd put a kid at risk... that was absolutely stupid."

What Saurage fails to realize is that the kid was chaff. The gator springs, you toss Steve, Junior, and seconds later, you're on the other side of the fence, in front of the cameras, saying "Bloimey, Oi'm going to catch it from the missus."

Saurage continues: "What makes them attack a human? Is it true hunger? Is it a territorial thing? To be honest with you, I haven't found any writings that can honestly explain why that alligator did that." He went on, "In my experience it usually happens because someone, i.e., my own self, jumps in the gator's pen and sits on its back."

He issued a final, chilling word of warning. ""Everybody needs to know that if there's a drainage ditch that's coming off a bayou; if there's any possible way that an alligator could be there, they're there. You might not see them, but they're there." And he added, "Because gators is invisible. When they want to be. Unless treated with several coats of house paint. By the way, have you seen our new white leucystic gator?"

Don't nobody tell Gary Saurage where I live, okay?

Posted by Steve H. at 1:26 PM | Permalink  

And I Are a Gator Turd

Remember the good old days, when people like me--the important people who really matter--were more worried about hurricanes than being bitten in the ass by rogue alligators? Me, too. Here's a passage I wrote back in 2004:

Everybody thought Camille was a big deal until Andrew came along. Andrew tore the living ass out of Dade County. Maybe Camille was less damaging because the eye came ashore in a dump called Pass Christian, Mississippi.

I feel safe in calling it a dump because, hey, what are the odds that anyone in Pass Christian has a computer?

Believe it or not, someone left an angry comment, so evidently Pass Christian has the Internet now, or more likely, a Pass Christian resident was visiting the United States as a foreign exchange student and used a computer at a public library. Where he wondered what all the shelves full of papery things in hard covers were for.

I don't remember what the comment was; I've deleted all my comments before a certain date. Something about how I wasn't a big man just because I had more than five teeth and had ridden an escalator.

Anyway, Pass Christian made the news again today, in a very limited manner. Says the "What's Happening" section of The Sun Herald, one of those papers from a region so desolate the editors are afraid to alienate potential readers by claiming to be published in a particular city, "Gator Bait Story Time, 10 a.m., Pass Christian Library. Susan Gregory and her pet alligator read stories, teach fishing tricks. Details: 452-xxxx."

This is a chick I have to meet.

Do you know how hard it is to convince a typical American woman to let you keep an alligator in the house? I mean a normal woman, not a tattooed mall rat who calls herself a Goth and thinks she's a vampire. It's damn hard. So Susan is a real find. Guys, remember those mail-order anacondas I mentioned a while back? Here's a lady who won't bat an eye when the UPS truck pulls up. She'll be like, "Put it in the garage next to the cobras."

I don't know exactly what a "fishing trick" is. Maybe she pulls a bass out of a hat.

I'll bet she's hot, too. She probably does the show in a T-back bikini and pumps.

"What's Happening"...that reminds me of the TV show with Dee and Raj and Rerun.

Oh God. Oh God. Someone put a hose in my hear and flush out the image of Shirley Hemphill in a bikini.

I can't believe they'll let you take a live alligator into a library in Mississippi. When I was in law school, the librarians wouldn't even let me bring potato chips. Good thing I rarely went in there.

The story says Sue and her pal "read stories, teach fishing tricks," but it doesn't lay out the division of labor. Maybe Sue reads the stories and the gator helps her with the big words.

Looks like another Floridian has fallen victim to the gator munchies. According to the website Ocala.com, "A Dunnellon teen fishing in a shallow, swampy area of the Florida Highlands was bitten by an alligator late Monday afternoon."

See if you can spot the problem with that sentence. Yes, that's right. The Florida "Highlands" are shallow and swampy. I wonder what the lowlands are like. I guess that would be the Gulf of Mexico.

This kid had two puncture wounds, and the story says he "was transferred Monday night to Ocala Regional Medical Center, where he received antibiotics. His injury was non-life threatening, and he was not expected to lose his arm."

This underscores one of the horrors of rural living. And that, of course, is the high likelihood of receiving emergency treatment from a graduate of a foreign medical school. Yes, Dr. Sathyavagiswarantandoorikebab, I have no doubt that in Bangladesh you would amputate in order to avoid exhausting the country's only tube of Neosporin, but here in the US, we like to give tiny puncture wounds a chance to heal before we get out the flint axe.

You know you're in trouble when you ask the doctor if your son is going to live, and he says, "Depends. What caste is he?"

As usual, we have a fun quote from local officials. "FWC Officer Kat Kelley said the gator probably thought Muller was a fish or piece of meat and let go when it realized its mistake."

"Mistake?" Technically, a person IS a piece of meat. The mistake was grabbing one too big to swallow.

Here's more: "A trapper contacted by wildlife officials Monday night set a baited hook of beef lung and planned to stay overnight in the swamp looking for the gator."

Where do you go when you want to buy a beef lung? Because I think I want one. I want to put it under some couch cushions in a hotel lobby and get the Guinness record for "world's largest whoopee cushion."

I have seen some disgusting stuff at the local grocery store. Tripe. Pig ears, complete with earwax. And of course, the beef testicle "family 12-pak." But I have yet to see a lung.

One more quote: "The unprovoked bite rate of alligators is about one bite for every 2.4 million residents, Kelley said. She said about 7,000 nuisance alligators are trapped in Florida every year."

Seven THOUSAND? If that's true, shouldn't alligator shoes be a lot less expensive? And where are we sending them? My vote: Pass Christian. They're apparently quite welcome there.

We now know the unprovoked bite statistics. But what about provoked bites? What about guys named Earl who watch The Crocodile Hunter on stolen cable and then go outside and poke sleeping gators with a yardstick? Is there a separate database for that? And if you get bitten by aggravating the crap out of a gator, do they still relocate it? Wouldn't it make more sense to relocate Earl?

What's one more trailer in Pass Christian?

That's all I feel like writing today. I've learned that the secret of gator-blogging is to conserve your material.

I'll sit back now and wait for the lynching party with Mississippi plates.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:56 AM | Permalink  

And Intelligence is on Their Side

I guess I'm the meanest son of a bitch who ever lived, for picking on the Texas tourist attraction Gator Country every chance I get. These guys are taking the initiative and trying to bring jobs and needed cash to the Beaumont area, which has been faring poorly since the pharmaceutical companies moved their testing facilities to India, and they could be out robbing liquor stores or stealing their neighbors' tractors, I guess. But damn, you have to see this. Go to their website and click the link that says "Watch Gary handle one of our adolescent gators!"

Are you there? Okay. The first thing I notice is that the video opens with a shot of what appears to be a flooded pasture. Now, let's give Steve Irwin credit, baby-abusing wackjob though he be. His zoo has nice pens with concrete pools for the lizards. Steve has one for himself, in which he and his family relax at the end of the day, while tourists throw them turkey necks and chicken feet. It looks like the guys at Gator Country created their artificial habitat by piling old refrigerators in a drainage ditch until the runoff backed up. This is not how pro gator handlers do it. This is how a guy named Enrique would do it if he built a gator ranch in Hialeah.

Oh God. I probably just gave someone an idea. I apologize in advance to the Animal Control people, who already have their hands full in Hialeah with dogfights and cockfights and people raising Noche Buena pigs in their guest bedrooms. Enrique will stop up a storm drain and put a bunch of poached gators in his yard off of Okeechobee Road, and Animal Control will send that poor goof who twice tried to feed his right hand to the same vicious rottweiler on national TV. I can see it now.

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: There's a good gator! Yes, let daddy stroke your snout! [singing] YOU ARE A CHIIIIIIILLLLDDD...OF THE UNIVERSSSSSSE...NO LESS THAN THE TREES AND THE STARRRRRS...YOU HAVE A RIIIIIGHT TO BE HEEERRRE....AAIIIIIEEEEE!!!

ENRIQUE: ¿Senor, que haces?

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: [head wedged firmly in the gator's jaws as it whips him back and forth like a rhythmic gymnastics banner] AIIIIEEEE!!!!

ENRIQUE: Que comemierda.

Then, like the rottweiler, the gator will be given expensive taxpayer-funded therapy instead of being dispatched with an axe. And maybe we'll see its reunion with the Animal Control guy.

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: Dr. Cugat, I have to say, it was lucky we found an alligator psychotherapist so close to the scene of the attack. By the way, you never did show me your diploma.

ENRIQUE: [disguised by a white coat from his uncle's butcher shop] Si, si. Mañana.

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: So what kind of progress have you made with our friend here?

ENRIQUE: Si, mucho progress. Two sousand dollar, please.

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: He certainly looks calm [because Enrique and his brother Gerardo force-fed him a tablespoon of Quaaludes before the goof came over]. Let me see how he reacts to me.

ENRIQUE: Two sousand dollar.

ANIMAL CONTROL GOOF: In a minute. Hello, little friend. Let daddy rub your belly! Yessssss, gator loves daddy! [singing] THE FIRST TIIIIME...EVER I SAAAW YOUR FAAACE...I THOUGHT THE SUNNNN...ROSE IN YOUR EYYY-eyyy-EYY-eey-EYY-EYYYYES...AIIEEEEEEE!!!! AIIIEEEEEE!!

ENRIQUE: One sousand dollar?

Anyway, the Gator Country video opens with owner Gary Saurage, who has been identified repeatedly as "Steve" in various news accounts, confronting a gator about seven feet long. Then the action starts, and the camera blatantly cuts to Saurage ruthlessly pounding a gator the size of a cocktail weenie. I mean, it's just sad. The worst special effects since John Kerry's advisors tried to glitz him up for the 2004 Presidential debates by painting him orange.

While the terrified micro-gator yips and dodges and tries to find its way back to the eggshell it just popped out of, Saurage proves his courage by slinging it around the flooded pasture and then bonking it against the rim of a big kidney-shaped plastic basin, which is the Gator Country homologue of a Steve-Irwin-style concrete gator pool.

Is that dignified? My philosophy with gators goes like this. Free them or fry them, but don't humiliate them.

In other gator news, another crabby family has forced the relocation of a large crocodilian. Remember the story I wrote about a few days back, where a family saw a gator and started crabbing to authorities? That was in Florida, where people are rude and everyone crabs constantly. I was surprised today to see that the same thing had happened in Mississippi.

Says the story:

A Sunday afternoon crabbing in a bayou near Griffin Street cemetery, turned exciting for the May family and their neighbors, when a 7-foot alligator made an appearance.

How can you spend a whole afternoon crabbing? Everyone gets cranky now and then, but you get it off your chest and move on.

Here's a good quote: "Duncan May of 5230 North Shore Circle, said despite the inconvenience, he might be glad the alligators have returned to his backyard." The story continues, "By the way, it turns out Duncan won't be getting that full scholarship to MIT this fall."

Duncan is glad the gators are there, because last year they left, and we had hurricanes. He thinks the gators knew they were coming and ran away.

First of all, I would like to know what good it does a gator to crawl a hundred yards at half a mile an hour when a hurricane is coming. If gators were stowing away in Greyhound buses, I would be impressed, but I don't think they did themselves much good just by leaving Duncan's backyard, which was probably not the epicenter of 2005 hurricane activity anyway. I don't recall any forecasters going, "It's Category Three! RUN, DUNCAN!"

Second, in autopsies, alligators routinely give up stomach contents such as mailboxes, beer bottles, old trolling motors, and their own tails. The human race, on the other hand, has weather satellites and giant computers. I know that's not much to go on, but based on those limited facts, who do you think is more likely to know when a hurricane is coming?

Work on it and then call Duncan.

Says Duncan's wife, favored to fill Cambridge's Lucasian Chair of Mathematics when Stephen Hawking retires, "I know this is their (alligators') natural habitat and that we have encroached on them, but I don't want them to hurt my grandbabies."

God, how people have changed. Fifty years ago, she would have been out in the yard herself, shooting gators with a pistol and tacking their hides to dry on the side of her corn crib. She wouldn't even have made Duncan put down his newspaper and come outside. Now she says that on balance, she has reluctantly concluded that it's better to inconvenience a brainless lizard than feed it her grandchildren.

Is this the same "Mississippi" I've heard of in the past? I know sometimes different places have the same name. Maybe there's a town called "Mississippi" near Seattle or San Francisco.

Mississippi's wildlife people are just as bright as the others I've been quoting here in recent weeks. Ryan Rawls, "nuisance alligator trapper" for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks, had some vital input. "Rawls added that alligators are natural inhabitants of the area, and are only a nuisance when they pose a threat to pets or people."

So we now know two things we could not possibly have figured out for ourselves. First, alligators were not dropped in Mississippi by Martians, and second, they are only a problem when they are a problem.

I agree with the story's characterization, "nuisance alligator trapper." If a trapper said something that silly to me, I would turn to whoever was nearby and crab, "That alligator trapper certainly is a nuisance."

More news as it develops. I hear that tomorrow afternoon, Gary Saurage and Steve Irwin plan to turn over a log and tag-team a startled newt.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:29 AM | Permalink  

Midnight, Saturday

I have changed the names to protect the innocent as well as myself.

FlaStudMuffin: i just watched the weddign crashers with marv and maynard. what a hoot

D_DeVito: I couldn't get through that...and I heard it a great movie.

D_DeVito: Might have been my ADD

FlaStudMuffin: it is conceivable that it's funnier to men

D_DeVito: i generally have a manish sense of humor...

FlaStudMuffin: vince vaughan is the balls

FlaStudMuffin: i saw like 3 minutes of "swingers" today i still have to rent that. that's him, isn't it?

D_DeVito: yes!

D_DeVito: Swingers is hilarious

D_DeVito: Have you seen the 40 year old virgin? That's worth renting too.

FlaStudMuffin: nope

D_DeVito: if you get HBO, they seem to be playing it this summer

D_DeVito: I still haven't watched the DeVito show I taped.

FlaStudMuffin: i forgot all about that

FlaStudMuffin: i still feel he should be fed to an alligator

FlaStudMuffin: on balance

D_DeVito: he's bite sized

FlaStudMuffin: right. right. you understand

D_DeVito: I still can not get over __ admitting I was right about ______

FlaStudMuffin: some people just look at me like i'm crazy when i say that

FlaStudMuffin: that guy is the devil

D_DeVito: that DeVito is bite sized?

FlaStudMuffin: yes and should be fed to an alligator

FlaStudMuffin: asap

D_DeVito: but what if this show is good

D_DeVito: then you lose a decent TV program

FlaStudMuffin: it would be necessary to prioritize

D_DeVito: indeed

FlaStudMuffin: i cannot believe people get paid to hold alligators down and shove swabs up their asses. that just blows my mind.

D_DeVito: Well, I'm looking for a new career....and that is one I hadn't previously considered

FlaStudMuffin: by state law i can't even throw vienna sausages at them. but these schmucks get paid to ram sponges up their rear ends

FlaStudMuffin: is that justice, i ask you?

D_DeVito: life is never fair

FlaStudMuffin: tell me something i don't know

FlaStudMuffin: think youll sleep tonight?

D_DeVito: doubtful

FlaStudMuffin: i think i should quote some of this IM to benefit my readers

D_DeVito: about Danny DeVito and alligator ass sponges?

D_DeVito: Many people would feel enlightened

FlaStudMuffin: i'll change your name to "danny de vito" so people won't know your IM handle

D_DeVito: okay!

Posted by Steve H. at 12:16 AM | Permalink  

Now I Know Why the Law Says Not to "Molest" Gators

I'm coming off an alligator high. Yesterday, I soared to the zenith of alligator absurdity, when I covered the story of Ghana resident Moses Amanor, who was fined for thrashing the mortal bejeezus out of his sister with the tail of a dead gator. After a peak like that, it's only natural that I would feel at least a mild post-gator crash.

So today I'm starting with something new. Anacondas.

I know what you've been wanting to ask me. "Steve," you've been saying aloud to your monitor, annoying the orderlies and waking the other patients, "your information on mail-order alligators was a godsend. I had been jonesing for a gator of my own for quite some time, yet until I read your important announcement, I had no idea where to buy one online. But tell me, how do I go about obtaining my own 500-pound, 30-foot long killer snake, to keep in my bathtub and call 'Artie'?"

Help is on the way, my friends. It's even easier than buying a gator. For while the authorities have imposed draconian bans on keeping fat, inert lizards that lie pressed against your chain-link fence like enormous turds, they have no problem allowing you to own vicious, voracious snakes that think of your neighbors' pit bulls the way you think of Chicken McNuggets.

I did a fair amount of Googling the other night for your benefit and because I have no discernible life, and I have concluded tentatively that Ray's Reptilia is your best online bet for a good deal on a pet anaconda. Did you click that link? Yes, friends, you read right. Ray will ship an adorable scamp of a baby anaconda to your door for the measly sum of one hundred and sixty dollars.

Don't be misled by the puny three-foot size of these entry-level beauties. I can tell you from personal experience that the more food you pump into a snake, the faster it grows. By feeding your new friend about three times what they recommend in books, you should be able to produce a respectable twelve-foot neck ornament in about a year and a half. After that, it gets more expensive, or you have to start adopting cats.

"Do they bite?" Hell yes, they bite. So do hamsters. What's your point?

Some of you may still not be satisfied. And the obvious reason is that I have not told you where you can get your own diamondback rattlesnake or, if you're a snob, white-lipped tree viper. Fret not. This guy in Missouri has diamondbacks for the low, LOW price of twenty dollars each. That's pick-up only, my friends. UPS will deliver a .50-caliber rifle, a live alligator, or even a $10,000 silicone shemale love doll programmed to call you "Big Daddy," but they have to draw the line somewhere. Whoops, I spoke too soon. Delta Airlines will bring you a white-lipped tree viper, and my guess is, the box will be labeled something like "used books."

I can't believe it's possible to make money selling animals most people want to kill with a hoe. I wonder if it's time for me to open a business, selling loathsome creatures I want to get rid of.

GIANT FLORIDA COCKROACHES, $5 each, shipped to your door. No charge for eggs laid in transit. They fly and smack you in the mouth and eyes, they eat your food, they poop in your cabinets, and when they mistake you for food while you're sleeping, they even bite. Order now; at these prices they won't last long.

FRISKY, BRIGHT-EYED NORWAY RATS, trapped in the cemetery down the street. Do-gooders cleaned up the cemetery, and the rats now have no place to live, so adopt one today and I'll mail it to you in map tube. These rats are very friendly, having lost all fear of man due to advanced rabies.

ANNOYING CENTRAL AMERICAN MILLIPEDES, two dollars a gallon. They climb up your walls. They climb across the ceiling. They fall in your drink. Walk across your living room at night and listen to them crunch. They secrete hallucinogenic compounds, but I am not sure how many you have to eat to get a decent buzz. I would start with a generous handful and work from there.

DELICIOUS BAHAMIAN LAND CRABS, sixty cents each. They look a lot like blue crabs, but they are said to taste more like the rotting garbage which is their natural food. They dig big holes in your yard and then abandon them. They wander into your garage, die behind the dryer, and stink until hell won't have it. Back over them in your driveway, and the claws pop your tires. And God help you if one gets ahold of you.

Guess I'll move on to gators now. And my first story is a beaut. Here is the title: "Palmetto Bluff tests effect of alligators on water quality." Now, I want you to think about that and ask yourself what it implies.

Those of you with dirty and depraved minds, i.e. the overwhelming majority, are correct. Scientists rounded up fifteen alligators in South Carolina and subjected them to demeaning yet hilarious anal probes. Just like Eric Cartman or the unfortunate folks on The X-Files. What is it about the human posterior that aliens find so alluring? How come you never hear about an ear probe or a nose probe or even a simple handshake?

Here's a quote: "The team collected about 15 alligators, swabbing each for stool samples that indicate the amount and types of bacteria contained in the animals' waste."

They make it sound so easy. "Collected" fifteen alligators, "swabbing each" for stool samples. I would have been more honest. I would have said, "Used clubs and ropes to subdue fifteen huge, filthy, terrified reptiles, and then held each one down and rammed a wad of cotton up its behind."

You can imagine what it's like, being one of these gators and then trying to tell your story to the other gators. About how the strange beings in white coats hauled you inside their shiny vehicle and crammed mysterious instruments up your crevice.

I'm no alligator scientist, but I have a question anyway. If you want to find out about germs in alligator poo, isn't it easier to test the poo instead of the angry, thrashing gator itself? I mean, if I had an insatiable craving to understand cow manure, I wouldn't run into a pasture and jam my arm up a bull's ass.

I'll include one more item, simply to continue humiliating cops who call for backup to help them capture alligators the size of teacup poodles. A guy in Brevard County, Florida found a crocodile in his yard while he was on the way to his mailbox. He said, “At first I thought it was an alligator. Then I thought it was a pet Cayman. It looked a little different so I grabbed him, taped him up, and brought him in here."

Attention, doughnut hounds. The other day, it took six Tacoma cops 45 minutes to tackle a two-foot alligator. But one guy in Brevard County took a crocodile down instantaneously, with one hand full of junk mail. And he wasn't even a peace officer. This guy is a veterinarian. Oh, I know. "Our gator was high on PCP!" Whatever. Have another Long John and sit down.

Okay, let's let the gators rest until Monday. Then it's back to work.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:47 PM | Permalink  

Give it a Ride and Then Beat Your Sister With It

Have you ever awakened and turned on your computer and just felt like God liked you?

That's how I feel sometimes when I get up and check the wires for alligator stories.

First up: a nut case in Mississippi is in trouble for catching a gator and giving it a ride on his ATV.

Yes, you read that right. Paul Gerald of absolutely nowhere, Mississippi, was upset that a five and a half foot gator had settled in his catfish pond, with the intention of consuming the inhabitants. Paul wasn't having any of that, so he took his pole to the pond and baited a hook with "a weenie on a cork." Next thing you know, the gator is tied to the ATV and having an enjoyable ride across Gerald's property.

Gerald asked his wife to take a picture of it. She was upset to see that her aging husband had been wrestling alligators. Wonder why. She is still upset today. Don't have to ask why. She's a woman, and she got mad about something, therefore she will remain mad until she dies.

I don't know why Gerald was so gung ho about saving his catfish. I always hear people talk about how great catfish are. Yes, they're great. If you enjoy the taste of mud.

The reason people in the country think catfish taste good is that they do not have the opportunity to taste real fish. They probably think tuna are born in cans.

I've had bass and pike, and I guess it's okay as long as you bring your tweezers to remove the bones while you eat, but the general rule is, freshwater fish is crap. I can go out off Miami and come back with a dolphin that has two-foot, non-fishy-tasting filets that are pure meat. Why would I want to screw around with a cruddy tasting catfish raised on Budweiser caps and cow manure?

The same rule applies to shellfish. Don't get me started on crawfish. Too late. I'm already started. Sure, they taste good. But you have to shell ten dozen to get half a pound of meat. Let me tell you about a little thing I like to call "lobster." You could fit five live crawfish inside a hollowed-out lobster tail. While a crawfish eater is busy cutting himself and accidentally flinging tiny slippery crawfish tails into the hair of other diners, a lobster eater can chomp down a pound and a half of meat dripping with drawn butter. And what about stone crabs? I've seen individual claws that were as big as six or seven puny Louisiana crawdads. And they taste terrific.

In short, Gerald should have let the gator eat the catfish and then fixed some fried gator tail.

Gerald got off with a warning. I think the wildlife people realized that once his wife got angry, any punishment they could mete out would pale in comparison to living with her.

As always, the authorities are quoted. I will reproduce their little blurb here, edited for accuracy. The bold text is mine. Isn't that always the case?

"You cannot possess one unless you work for us," said Lt. Col. Steve Adcock, assistant chief of law enforcement for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. The only way to possess one is if it is a hunting season and a cites number has been issued (in a lottery for alligator hunters fat guys whose T-shirts don't quite cover their navels) or if you sneak into our office and steal it from the refrigerator.

"We want to stress the fact that the public does not need to attempt to capture an alligator. They--the alligators, not the public--are dangerous critters who tend to be of higher intelligence than the folks who try to subdue them. We do not recommend anybody capturing one. They need to contact our department (800-BE-SMART) and we can send an agent a fat guy there and he knows areas where to relocate them such as his Weber kettle. If you feed an alligator, you're creating a problem that's going to haunt us because it loses its fear of man. Or, if you're Steve Irwin, its fear of screaming babies. It is also important to note that you must not pay for alligator kibbles using food stamps."

The news gets better and better. Yesterday, cops in Colorado Springs found a three-foot caiman guarding an indoor marijuana crop. The caiman belonged to Robert and Sandra Hatcher, two stoners who lived in the rented house and/or weed-a-tarium. The landlord had evicted them, and they were arrested because they came back to steal the refrigerator. Sure. That's where stoners keep their snacks.

You can tell the dope had wreaked havoc on their brains, because they thought a three-foot lizard would deter other stoners from stealing their stash. Fat chance. You know how stoners are. They'd sit cross-legged on the floor and pass the caiman a joint and try to commune with it until it lunged forward and bit off their genitals. Or got high and started begging for Chips Ahoys.

The cops said it was common for stoners to use reptiles to "guard" their dope and pills and so on, and that in previous cases, snakes had had to be euthanized because of their exposure to drugs. I don't get that at all. Are they saying the snakes were tripping? How could they tell? And how high do you have to be to seriously think a snake is going to guard your drugs? A snake will guard a rat like nobody's business, but that's about it.

If you used a three-foot caiman to intimidate me, the net result would be a three-foot-long caimain-shaped stain on your carpet. But maybe they look bigger when you're high on meth or whatever.

If that story wasn't fun enough for you, how about this? Police in Ghana have arrested a man for beating his sister with a stuffed alligator tail. No word no how an alligator tail ended up in Africa. Maybe a gullible American sent it to a spammer as a Kwanzaa present.

Here:

Tema, July 5, GNA - A 35-year-old man, who whipped his sister with a dried alligator tail without any provocation has been jailed 18 months plus a fine of 500,000 cedis by the Tema circuit court "B".

Moses Amanor was convicted on his own plea of guilty to two counts of assault and causing harm and will serve additional six months' imprisonment if he fails to pay the fine.

"Without any provocation." I guess in Ghana it's okay to beat your sister with a dead alligator, as long as you're provoked. As it should be everywhere.

I have to find out what that fine amounts to. Let me check Xe.com.

Oh, boy. This guy is SCREWED. Guess what five hundred grand in colorful Ghan-opoly money adds up to in real cash? Fifty-four dollars and forty-eight cents. He better start spamming.

DEAREST ONE IN CHRIST:

I HOPE YOU WILL NOT BE OUTRAGED OR HUMILIATIONED FOR
TO RECEIVE THIS EMAILS FROM ONE WHICH YOU HAS NOT MET.
BUT I IS WRITING ABOUT A PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE WHICH
SHALL BY JOVE PROFIT US GREATLY.

MY BANK, ROYAL TRUST OF GREATER TEMA PLC BBW BVD,
CONTAINS A FUND BELONGING TO THE ODD FOREIGNER STEVEN
IRWIN WHO WAS KILLED IN A GHASTLY YET WHOLLY PREDICTABLE
ACCIDENT INVOLVING SEVERAL CROCODILES, A FRIGHTENED INFANT,
AND A TRAMPOLINE.

AS A RESULT, WE ARE IN POSSESSION OF $35 MILLION USD CONVEYED
TO MR. IRWIN'S ACCT BY THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL.

IF YOU WILL POSE AS MR IRWIN'S NEXT OF KIN AND FORWARD THE
SUME OF $54.48 USD AS A PROCESSING FEE, I SHALL TURN OVER 20%
OF THE FUNDS TO YOU TO PISS AWAY WITH GREAT JOY.

PAY NO HEED TO NAUGHTY INDIVIDUALS WHO MAY CLAIM THAT
I AM A SILLY FELLOW IN NEED OF FUNDS TO PAY A FINE FOR BEATING
HIS STUPID COW OF A SISTER WITH THE TAIL OF A DECEASED
REPTILE.

ANXIOUSLY AWAITING YOUR REPLY,

DR. MOSES AMANOR, BFD, STFU
TEMA, GHANA

Moses is apparently a bad seed from the word go. Look:

Chief Inspector Martey said on hearing that Amanor slapped their mother, the sister went home and confronted him around 2130 hours but he got offended and beat her with the alligator tail, inflicting multiple wounds on her till she was rescued by passers by. As if not satisfied, Amanor followed the sister and hit her on the head with a stick, which resulted in a big cut.

I'm kind of surprised that a dried alligator tail can inflict that kind of damage. Maybe I should start carrying one for self-defense. I could ward off my sister with it, and once she leaves me in peace, I could use it to make soup.

Hey...in Ghana, I could afford to beat my sister with an alligator tail several times a week! I may just emigrate.

Picture the scene at the Ghana Embassy.

ME: Hi, I want to emigrate to Ghana!

EMBASSY GUY: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

ME: ?

EMBASSY GUY: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

ME: Is something wrong?

EMBASSY GUY: You wait! I get my friend Ibrahim! [he runs off and returns with his friend] Okay, now you repeat fonny joke!

ME: I'm totally serious.

EMBASSY GUY: [pulls out dried alligator tail] Get out, naughty man, or I give you fifty dollars' worth!

Believe it or not, there is more gator stuff on the wire, but I am just too tired to write it up.

Enjoy your weekend, and try not to dream of angry stoned lizards.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:09 AM | Permalink  

And You Can See it in Real Time

You keep thinking a day will come when the gators stories will dry up for good, and I'll have to burn my keyboard and go get a job at a drive-thru. But you are WRONG, death-roll breath. In this morning's news, gators are even hotter than Kim Jung-Il's malfunctioning Tae Bo Dong.

I think Il needs to create a missile called the Long Duk Dong. It homes in on Molly Ringwald, explodes nearby, and showers her yard with pamphlets reading, "No more yanky my wanky. The Donger need FOOD."

Remember yesterday, how I told you about those guys in Texas who converted an old Hess station into an attraction called "Gator Country"? Well, they're in the news again. The weather cancelled Fourth of July fireworks in nearby Texas cities, but Gator Country came through by providing a display.

Right away, I picture a guy named Junior, in a shirt that says "Beer Belly Under Construction," rushing to Gator Country from a nearby Target, with the bed of his truck full of sparklers and "snake" pellets. And then being sent back because he forgot the matches.

Here's a quote from the owner: "Saurage said he was concerned that the noise might bother their pregnant gators, so they set up the fireworks in a field away from them."

Right away you know these guys are on top of their alligator studies. Last I heard, alligators lay eggs. And how much would you bet there were pregnant Texan humans watching the show? Standing right under the explosions. With beers in their hands.

I'd love to go see this place, except if the owners knew I had been writing about them, they'd shoot me on sight and claim the gators got me.

TEXAS RANGER: I hear you done shot yourself a smartass without a permit.

SAURAGE: Wudn't me. A gator got him.

TEXAS RANGER: In the parking lot?

SAURAGE: See how it left footprints on his rear end?

TEXAS RANGER: 'F I didn't know better, I'd say they was tire tracks.

MANUEL: [an illegal immigrant, in Spanish] Please help me! This man smear me with chicken fat and make the lizard chase me! Then he shoot the fat boy from the Internet!

TEXAS RANGER: What's he say?

SAURAGE: He said "Long live Al Qaeda" and "I messed with Texas."

Here's something interesting. A rare white alligator is going on display in Columbia, South Carolina. In other news, a hardware store near Gator Country has reported the theft of a five-gallon bucket of white interior housepaint.

It's not an albino gator. It has some dark patches. That makes it a "leucistic" alligator, whose nearest human equivalent is Michael Jackson.

This kind of thing makes the TV news in South Carolina. It narrowly edged out a story titled "Beaufort Piggly Wiggly Puts Hog Maws on Sale."

I know you're checking your Visa statement right now to see if you have enough points to get a ticket to Columbia. Spare yourself the expense. The gator's home, Riverbanks Zoo and Garden and Brushless Truck Wash, has put up a webcam page. Any minute now, the chicken-fat-smeared illegal alien will trot through the frame.

I can't see shit. But luckily, they also have a Windows Media file of the penguin tank. I notice the keeper in the background is wearing shorts. Which makes you wonder how much South Carolinians know about keeping penguins happy.

JIMMY RAY: By God, the penguins look peaked.

JOE BOB: What's wrong wiv 'em?

JIMMY RAY: Damned if I know. They ought to be fine. I been feedin' 'em bobbycue all day.

I shouldn't talk. When I was a kid, back in Kentucky, they used to have a place called "The Snake Pit," near Natural Bridge Resort. It was four sheets of vertical plywood, arranged to form a square enclosure, and it had sort of a roof. The guy that owned it threw whatever snakes he came across over the side, and I think he charged you fifty cents to go look. I would be amazed if he ever fed them anything except each other.

I made my mother let me go in once, which did not sit well with her at all. All women in Kentucky are convinced that snakes are the devil. To be more clear, they are convinced that each and every snake, in its own right, is Satan himself. They don't trouble themselves over the question of how every snake on earth manages to be the same person. Ask, and they say "Don't talk like an ungodly heathen."

Last time I saw The Snake Pit, I believe they had a concrete slab and a pretty sign. All they need now is a guy in khaki shorts to go in there and aggravate the snakes by poking them with a baby.

I think I'll conclude with a sad story. A guy in Middleburg, Florida is begging a thief to return his sick alligator.

Reptile rescuer Jason Hoffman came home the other day to find that the gator, "Lucky," had been stolen from his backyard doghouse. Says Hoffman, "Because he had Metabolic Bone Disease, he didn't really have the full strength of a normal gator."

Right away, you have to wonder how a person finds out his alligator has Metabolic Bone Disease. Was he listless? Did he lack his usual enthusiasm for catching a Frisbee? Did he stop eating the neighbor's cats?

How much would you pay for veterinary tests to determine what was wrong with an alligator? Not much, if you think the way I do. Hell, fifteen bucks buys five gallons of peanut oil.

Still, I think it's worth it to find Lucky and study him. With work and a huge government grant, it may be possible to use him to breed a race of tender boneless gators.

If a vet told me my gator had sick bones, I'd go, "Is the skin all right? Is the meat all right? Thank God. Hand me the saw."

Here is how I would deal with bad veterinary gator news.

1. "My gator has cancer? That is too bad. Turn on the grill."

2. "My gator has congestive heart failure? That is too bad. Turn on the grill."

3. "My gator has a fleeting ice cream headache? That is too bad. Turn on the grill."

4. "My gator may become sick at a later date, although there are no indications of illness at this time? That is too bad. See items 1 through 3, above."

If you live near Middleburg, the following text may be of interest:

If you know anything about the case, call our partner First Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.

You will remain anonymous and could receive a cash reward up to $1000.

You can imagine the ethical dilemma Middleburg residents are facing. Be true to your friends, or turn them in and make a down payment on the biggest plasma TV that will fit in your trailer.

Gator news will continue, as long as Google News keeps feeding me fresh fodder.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:36 AM | Permalink  

Someone Call Jeff Foxworthy

I will not lie. For once. Today the gator-news pickings are somewhat slim. However, a talented chef can make a feast from three stale crackers and half a tub of Country Crock, so here goes.

First off, Reggie the LA gator is back in the news. It is day 327 of Reggie Watch. As you may recall, Reggie has been hiding in a little lake out there for quite some time, and Steve Irwin has promised to try and capture him, provided his wife can produce a newborn in time to use it as bait.

No one can figure out where Reggie is. I know where Reggie is. He's with Tom Cruise. Reggie has become a Scientologist.

Sources tell me Cruise enticed Reggie to watch Scientology films by creating a trail from the lake to the Scientology temple, using bits of his wife's placenta. Then a technician hooked Reggie up to the E-Meter and gave him a free audit, the transcript of which goes something like this:

SCIENTOLOGY LOONY: Okay, tell me about your early sexual experiences. Anything really funny we can use to embarrass you if you leave the church?

REGGIE:

SCIENTOLOGY LOONY: Maybe we should move on to net worth. Got any offshore accounts? Jewelry? Do you have any equity in that lake you live in?

REGGIE:

SCIENTOLOGY LOONY: If we offered to show you a free movie, would you rather see War of the Worlds or Battlefield Earth?

REGGIE: ROAR! SNARL! [Eats Scientology loony]

ISAAC HAYES: Crazy-ass cracker.

JOHN TRAVOLTA: Remember how gay I looked in Grease?

ISAAC HAYES: Who's the green private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?

TOM CRUISE: REGGIE!

JOHN TRAVOLTA: We can dig it.

Here's an idea: Get Shorty III: Reggie Eats Chili Palmer.

In other news, some wackjob in Texas has started his own low-budget Steve Irwin park. In a location so barren the story only refers to it as "Southeast Texas." Wal-Mart-greeter-cum-entrepreneur Steve Saurage has invested $250,000 of what is hopefully a bank's money in Gator Country, an attraction by the side of I-10 containing, like, three gators and seven turtles obtained at Petco.

The star attraction is "Big Al," who, at thirteen feet, is the largest gator in captivity. In Texas. That Steve Saurage knows of. At the moment.

Thirteen feet? I crap bigger gators than that.

Talking about the gator-feeding show, the story says, "There's even a monorail by which a staff member will swing out across the gator-filled waters."

Right off, you have to wonder if the reporter knows what "monorail" means. And if it really is a monorail, how did they build it with$250,000? I have this mental picture in my head. A stolen grocery cart on four-by-four tracks, propelled by that famous fat guy who says "Git 'er done." Or maybe an old Pinto body with lots of Bondo and no primer. Recently retrieved from Saurage's front yard. Rendering his in-laws homeless.

I can tell these guys were inspired by Steve Irwin, because Saurage says, "We start our shows with the babies, then we go to where all the four-foot alligators are." Babies. Did you see that? Maybe they should have a Scottish-themed gator show. They could have a fat guy in a kilt wave a baby and go, "Get in Big Al's belleh!"

I'll rewrite a paragraph the way it should have been done in the first place.

Here is the original:

During this portion of the show, Saurage and members of the Gator Country team, with little or no protective gear, will walk out to the end of a surface-level deck and hand-feed the large reptiles, even going so far as to slap the jagged toothed beasts on the snout, mere inches from the possibility of severe injury. There's even a monorail by which a staff member will swing out across the gator-filled waters.

And the corrected version:

During this portion of the show, Saurage and members of the Gator Country team, his band of terrified illegal aliens with little or no protective gear because Mexicans are inexpensive in Southeast Texas, will walk out to the end of a surface-level deck and hand-feed the large reptiles their hands, even going so far as to slap the jagged toothed beasts, i.e. their girlfriends on the snout, mere inches from the possibility of severe injury. There's even a makeshiftmonorail built from PVC pipe and a converted Porta-John stolen from a construction site by from which a staff member terrified Guatemalan will swing out across into the gator-filled waters.

I would have made a great copy editor.

Here's a fun paragraph:

"So far, with the way it's going now, we're doing good. The heat is slowing things down a little bit, but in Southeast Texas, you can't do anything about that. We started our business plan based on two cars an hour. The field trips in May were great, and we've got day cares coming every day."

"Day cares." Tell me you don't love Texas. If your three-year-old isn't savvy enough to run from a gator, to hell with him. This is what Barney is REALLY like, you little fairies. Wake up and smell the coffee.

You have to read this:

Once done with the juveniles, where patrons can feed the reptile hot dogs on fishing line, the tour proceeds to holding pens which house two large alligator snapping turtles. Apart from the Big Al Show, Saurage says that the turtles is a patron favorite. They bear alligator bite marks, and one is missing back feet, courtesy of Big Al.

So evidently Saurage didn't realize the turtles needed their own pen after the first foot came off. It wasn't until Big Al ate the second foot that Saurage began to detect a pattern of bad behavior. He probably thought the first foot fell off because the turtle was molting.

By the way, you cannot imagine what comes out of a reptile after you feed it hot dogs. Don't ask me how I know. If they spread this stuff on the north bank of the Rio Grande, illegal immigration would cease instantaneously.

I guess that's all I need to write today. I thank Steve and his crew for keeping Gator News alive for one more glorious day.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:19 AM | Permalink  

Today's Moment of Lucidity

I guess the clouds have parted a little. Today I managed to find a couple of new alligator stories. But it's a national holiday, so what are the odds that there will be new ones tomorrow? Journalists will spend the day eating soy burgers and waving their little umbrella drinks at each other and whining about how they miss Bill Clinton and they wish they were in France. They won't be writing alligator stories. I may have to hop in the car, head west, and find some of my own. But with this kind of notice, it will be impossible to find a midget to brush down with Koogle and tie to a mangrove tree. Especially if I take time to pull the usual permits.

First story: the lady who was eaten by the alligator a month or so ago turns out to have been drunk and probably really high. She was so drunk, the alligator blew a .20.

No, not really, but she came in at three times the legal threshold, and she had eaten approximately a pound of Xanax. If this had been a young man, the following words would be springing into my mind: "fraternity hazing."

I think the message here is, if you're going to pass out in Florida, try to do it indoors. Like I do. The worst thing that can happen to me is a fierce mauling by a hungry parrot.

The encouraging thing about this story is that it suggests there is hope an alligator will one day eat my sister. Unless things have changed, she's usually bombed on OxyContin, and she likes to walk her Maltese in public parks. To a gator, she's like a heavy lunch complete with an appetizer.

Second story: a ten-foot alligator was caught in an Alabama pond. At first I got all excited about this, thinking, "Another alligator thousands of miles from where alligators normally live! Think of the stupid things the local officials will say!"

Then the coffee started working and I remembered that Alabama is in the southeastern United States.

Some uptight family in a place called Pike County bitched because the gator was in its private pond, and a "professional trapper" came to get it.

I love how they use the phrase "professional trapper" all the time, like they're implying these guys know what they're doing. In reality, we all know they're a bunch of snaggle-toothed beer-bellies who show up with duct tape, Coors Light, and baling twine. And then the bystanders watch and listen while they say professional-trapper stuff. "I told you not to wear them golf shoes, Jerry Bob." "Use both hands, Billy Earl. Set your beer down if you have to"

Here's something weird. "The family requested not to be identified." That's Southerners for you. They're not sure WHY they should be ashamed of having an alligator, but they are shunning coverage until they find out. Whatever else we know about these people, we know they have money. They have a pond big enough to hold an alligator, and they are embarrassed by something completely trivial. Only affluent Southerners get embarrassed over crap like this. It is impossible to embarrass white trash, which is one reason decent Southerners hate them so much.

The amazing thing about this story is, the authorities didn't say anything egregiously stupid. They must have day jobs in the private sector. No pure government employee could make sense at a time like this. I'll quote Sergeant Jerry Jinright, Pike County area supervisor for the Alabama Department of Conservation.

Jinright advised any residents who encounter an alligator on their property to stay away from it and call the authorities quickly.

“Just call the local game warden immediately and we'll come get rid of it,” Jinright said.

This guy must have had a real job at some point. Note the contrast between him and Florida bureaucrat Willie Puz, whose gator policy was summarized thusly back in June: call the gator police "if people feel an alligator is a public safety threat, for example, if an alligator is in your garage, under your car, on your porch, in your swimming pool or if it approaches or snaps at people."

I.e., "Don't drag me away from my seventh doughnut until you see a body."

Here's more: "Jinright said that in recent days, six alligators ranging from 10 to 12 feet in length have been caught in the Eufaula area." I glean two things from that. First of all, Alabama doesn't play games with annoying gators. Being a gator in a playground in Alabama is like being a felony-murder defendant in George Bush's Texas. Get ready to fry. Literally. Second, if you think you might be even remotely appetizing, stay the hell away from Eufaula, Alabama.

Tallahassee has a gator story. This is the most exciting thing that has happened there since Jeb Bush cut the ribbon at the town's first Starbuck's, which went out of business a month later, when people realized they had no incentive to remain alert in Tallahassee. A cop saw a partially mashed gator in the road and called another cop to come get it. The story refers to the gator as "a nuisance." I would have described it more accurately as "road debris."

I'm sure I've swerved around things more dangerous than gators here in Miami and gone on my merry way. Like old Cubans in Honda Civics. Ancient Jews who knew Moses personally, in cars of sizes inversely proportional to their average height of four feet, three inches. Having seen so many of these folks, I have to wonder if cheesecake stunts your growth.

If an alligator in the road is so dangerous it has to be removed by police, why aren't they also rounding up elderly drivers? I'd face a dozen alligators before I'd sit on a bus bench in Boca Raton with my eyes closed. The other day I saw a Crown Vic with a row of twenty tiny stickers on the fender that looked like bus-benches.

Is it even legal to sell a car to a ninety-year-old man who can't see over the dashboard? Are these people driving by Braille, or what? I think Lincoln-Mercury could make a killing down here by selling a Marquis equipped with a periscope.

What if we do this: let's have a video-game developer create a driving simulator that can be projected on the inside of a windshield. Old people get in, they think they drove to the store and held up the line while they emptied their tabbed and cross-referenced file of two-cent coupons, they get out, and they take a nap.

When I inevitably go to hell, I know I'll spend it in line at Walgreen's on a Sunday night, behind coupon ninjas who shop with carts, and idiot women who buy chewing gum with personal checks.

Okay, that's your Fourth of July gator roundup. Enjoy your burgers.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:04 PM | Permalink  

Dags and Yobbos Continue Mourning Famous Doorstop

This is a very dark day for me. I just...it's hard to write about. I knew it would come, and yet now that it's here, I have no words to express what I feel. Should I even keep blogging after this? What for? What for, when the goddamn rug has been yanked out from under me like this...I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That sounds like self-pity, doesn't it? Why should I let my grief ruin your morning reading? That's all that matters to you, right? You came here to see the monkey dance. Fine. That's all I'm worth. I'll dance for you. I know I'm just your morning humor monkey. What does it matter to you if I'm hurting inside?

I'll try to write something funny. Even though the worst has happened. Even though there isn't one decent alligator story in the news today.

Don't send me patronizing emails saying the alligators will be back. All right? That's not what I need right now. Don't tell me this is Florida and as long as people continue going for canal-bank walks with dogs named FiFi, there will be alligator stories. That doesn't help me TODAY, now does it? So just keep your emails and shut your miserable pieholes. Just stay with me and help me cope. You rotten bastards.

Let me see what else I can find. Hold on while the humor monkey looks for a new banana, okay?

God. This is what I'm reduced to. Should I even write about this? This must be how Connie Chung feels now that she's trying to get a job in infomercials.

Okay, here goes. "Harriet the giant Galapagos tortoise, on the other hand, will never defecate again." That's the latest news from Australia. That's what passes for journalism down there. A blind turtle passing for a 176-year-old relic of Darwin's voyage is dead, and apparently, the only way they can tell is that it went one more month than usual without taking a deuce. I mentioned this the other day. Back when there was real alligator news to write about.

I have to stop thinking back to the glory days. When you could click on Google News and take your choice of a wide variety of small loathsome dogs that had recently been sacrificed to the gods of conservation and natural selection. Shih tzus. Poodles. The occasional Dandie Dinmont terrier. No, let's forget all about that, because now we have turtle news. We're going to read turtle news, and we're going to LIKE it.

Harriet was the pet of Steve Irwin, the Baldrick of pop herpetology. Steve Irwin's pet turtle can't take a crap, so now they're going to bury it in Steve's backyard and tell him it went to dance with the fairies. Or whatever they say in Australia when a pet dies. It's off sniffing the butt of the big dingo in the sky. That's what the aborigines will tell their kids. That's what they said when Peter Allen died.

I wonder...if Steve Irwin got constipated for several days, would they bury him, too?

The Harriet tragedy should blow over fairly quickly. Steve's mum will take him to the store and get him another turtle, and he'll blub for a while and refuse to eat his Vegemite sandwiches or come out of his room to watch "Skippy," and that will be that.

It's a fake turtle anyway. I keep telling people that. Do you seriously believe Australians could keep a turtle alive for more than a week? Please. You know the Australians. They probably got drunk four times a week and forced poor Harriet to suck on a beer bong full of Foster's. She probably died several times a month and had to be replaced by new turtles. Or, in a pinch, old turtle shells manned by zoo employees with little seniority. Steve would take the new hire, paint him green, shove him in the turtle shell, and tell him to crawl around eating carrots off the ground until Steve's mum got back from the turtle store.

The story goes on: "Harriet’s amazing story began when she was just five years old and was one of three giant tortoises taken from the Galapagos Islands by Charles Darwin on his historic voyage aboard HMS Beagle."

Three turtles? Three? What happened to the other two? Evidently Harriet was a bit ruthless. Turtles are like that. I think we have a turtle Supremes situation here. Remember how Diana Ross screwed Berry Gordy and got the other Supremes canned? I guess Harriet screwed Charles Darwin, and the Mary Wilson turtle and the Florence Ballard turtle ended up as chowder.

I KNEW Darwin was a freak.

Here's more:

That was in 1835 and if you want to get it into some perspective time-wise, it was also the year Melbourne was founded by John Batman, Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairytales, Samuel Colt patented the first revolver and Mrs Twain gave birth to a baby boy called Mark.

Did you catch that? Melbourne was founded by Batman. So I guess the original name was Gotham City. Does that make Harriet "Bat-turtle"?

I wonder if Darwin used a Colt pistol to dispatch the Mary and Florence turtles to the big chowder tureen in the sky. While Harriet leered provocatively from her pen, clutching a can of Foster's and clad only in a filmy negligee.

Says the story, "She was 176 years old and thought to be the world’s oldest animal in captivity." So now that title goes to Senator Robert Byrd.

Proving that Americans aren't the only people with the common sense to barely be able to stand Harriet's keeper, the story says:

Whatever, it led to what in my mind is the most amazing thing about Harriet: she managed to live for 19 years with crocodile hunter Steve Irwin without going totally insane. Yes, that’s right, since 1987 Harriet has lived at Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo and not once have we seen the headline, “Crikey! Giant tortoise attempts to kill keeper!”

Maybe there is hope for these people and their dry little island after all.

I question the writer's conclusions, however. How is it possible to conclude that an tortoise is or is not insane? Or homicidal? It may have lunged violently at Irwin every day, only he didn't notice, because by the time the lunge was fully underway, he was already in another area of the park, waving a shrieking toddler at a starving leopard.

You know who they should interview about this? The Slowskys. You know the tortoise couple that pimps Comcast cable? They always complain about cable Internet being too fast. They wouldn't complain if they had the Comcast connection I used to have. It used to take me weeks to download a single midget porn bit torrent. Don't get me started. But I suppose maybe the Slowskys were contacted last week, and they haven't gotten around to responding because they see no reason to rush.

I wondered whether Australians had had a hard time coping with the loss. I called Wylie Minogue, editor in chief of the Sydney Morning Tatler and asked him if Aussies had spent the weekend drunk, mourning the death of the tortoise. And he said, "Yes. 'Tortoise'?"

If the Australians can live with pain, so can I. I'll be strong and keep checking Google news, and maybe some fresh gator stuff will pop up in the morning. Until then, tortoise will have to do.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:01 PM | Permalink  

Peanut for Your Thoughts

I know you're thinking there can't possibly be any news today involving alligators. But sadly, the alligator-news teat is a mighty teat indeed, which never runs dry. It would probably explode, were I not here each day to milk it.

The first piece of news is only news to me, probably. Guess what, friends? You can now own your own playful, affectionate, nineteen-foot reptile! Yes, it's true. I had no idea. You can buy alligators over the Internet. And they're cheap.

Don't ask me how I learned this, because I forgot, but there are sites where reptile nuts post classified ads. "Thirty-foot python to good home. Not good with kids. So far." Stuff like that. And people post ads for alligators. And they seem to be completely serious.

I went to one such site (Kingsnake.com) and found an ad leading to this spectacular site: Herpetological Breeding Research. If you click that link, you will be pleased to see that fourteen-inch alligators are less than seventy dollars each, and you can buy them via PayPal. And they ship by UPS, although as I noted yesterday in connection with Petsolutions.com, I wonder if the UPS guy has any idea what he's delivering.

If fourteen inches won't cut it, you can buy a two-foot-long "program alligator" for a hundred bucks. Not too sure what a program alligator is. Sounds like a gator with a substance abuse problem. "Doc, I can't stop eating those squishy little shih tzus."

I know what you're thinking. "God, I have GOT to have my own alligator. But isn't it illegal?" Apparently not. Different states have different rules, but you can own gators. In Florida, there is an expensive permitting process, so most people opt to set out shih tzus and let wild gators come and go at will. But in progressive states like Indiana, all you need is a leash and a kiddie pool.

Incidentally, you can also buy via Reptileauctions.com, where I found this disturbing ad text: "I have a 6 foot crocodile monitor that I am selling. It is not very tame, but I have held it and I think if someone could spend 1-2 hours a day with it, he would calm down. I'm not sure what sex he is. He is very nice looking with no flaws. His tail is very long and strong."

I just don't know where to begin. If you are willing to spend one to two hours a day fighting off a gigantic vicious lizard, it might calm down and start to like you. That's what I call advertising. And the owner isn't sure what sex he is, but he has been willing to spend long periods holding him, regardless. I guess I have no room to talk, but some people should be forced to socialize with other human beings at gunpoint.

As for recent captures, the cops nailed a two-foot alligator in Tacoma, and it took six of them 45 minutes to subdue it. Says department spokesperson Duncan Cruller, "I bet we would have caught it faster if it had had a doughnut taped to its back."

See if you can guess which part of the previous paragraph I made up.

Here's how you capture a two-foot gator in less than 45 minutes. 1. Set foot on gator. 2. Light cigar and reach for pillowcase. When I read these stories, I marvel that the cops have ever caught anybody who, at the time, wasn't unconscious.

I know I'm cheating here, but I mentioned this yesterday, and I thought I should follow up. Florida has been invaded by giant ten-pound Gambian rats.

Don't YAWN. Stop that! I'm serious. Look!

I guess giant rats aren't that exciting after pythons and cobras, but work with me.

Here's something scary: "The rats can weigh nearly 10 pounds and devour peanut crops across northwest Africa. They also can carry the potentially fatal monkeypox virus."

I'm not that scared by the peanut thing, but what the hell is monkeypox? People are practically monkeys. In many cases, the difference is negligible. Does that mean we're going to ge