Polk Salad Annie. Gators got ya Granny.
1:52 p.m. || 2004-07-23
As the foul jealousy of the Republic of Texas continues to escalate here in DLand world I would like to point out a nice little story I found in the local paper (okay, the Austin American Statesman, but it's local enough). It appears that we may have been out whitetrashed by some of our neighbors to the East.
Last week in Port Orange, Florida a man was arrested for busting his girlfriend upside the head with a three foot long alligator. It reminds me of something you would see in an episode of Reno 911.This is funny to me for two reasons:
If you think back to 'Project Critter Relocation' you'll remember that one of the things we did was put an alligator in my neighbors car. Well, I don't know how it is where you're from, but in College Station, Texas you don't happen upon a small alligator every day. So once we removed the 'gator from our neighbors car, we kept it. the very next semester I moved into the dorm and thought this was probably the end of my reptile keepin' days, but I was wrong. I lived in Hart Hall which is one of the oldest crappiest dorms on campus. It turns out that my RA is somewhere north of 400 pounds and I live up on the top floor of the dorm. 400 pound people don't like to climb stairs and we have no elevator. Glorious piece of knowledge #2 is that my suitemate never stays in his dorm room. He lives with his girlfriend and has only rented this dorm room so he has a place to stay when her parents are in town. As crazy good-luck fate would have it, the semester before he had built a huge terrarium for his Boa but over the Chrismas break the poor chap went off to meet his maker (the snake, not the suitemate). So to outline my situation, I move to a dorm where the RA never checks our rooms and the room next to me is devoid of any belongings except a bed and a 10' X 12' reptile cage. Perfect!! All of the other students on my floor are freshmen. I'm a junior. Because of this (or because they are sad tools whose parents never let them have any fun) they fall into 2 categories. 1) They worship me; or 2) They are scared shitless of me. Both of these work for me on many sadistic levels because it means they will leave me alone and not ask too many questions. I figure it would be a slap in the face of Karma if I choose not to move Ali (sorry Alex, but that is what her name was!) the gator into the dorm with me.
For the next year and a half Ali lived with us, eating a steady diet of all kinds of random stuff. It was kept pretty quiet because only my roommate, John our suitemate and I knew about her. All of the other kids on the floor were told that John was some kind of sadistic animal torturer. We told them that explained the odd noises (no doubt from Ali taking out a rat or some other small mammal) coming from his room and the fact that we never saw him except for weird hours on certain weekends. John had a good time playing this fact up and would often be found sitting right in front of their door waiting for them to open up so he could scare the ever living shit out of some little 18 year old kid. I got to come along behind him and be 'Good Cop' and tell them that as long as they left John alone it would all be okay. "Just ignore him and pretend like he doesn't exist. Besides, if you rat him out he might get really pissed and then what?" was my favorite line. It was horribly effective and to the best of my knowledge no one ever really spoke up to any of the RA's.
The really fun times for me were taking Ali for runs between 1 and 3 am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The bars in College Station closed at 1am back then so I would put this gator on a sorta homemade leash (it was actually some aluminum conduit with a steel cable through it, to allow me to keep some distance) and walk it around campus. And by "walk" I really mean, "hide in the bushes like some sick perv until someone really, really staggering drunk would come by at which point I would thrust an alligator upon them." Not close enough that they'd get hurt mind you, but close enough that they were sure to see it. All this was pretty childish I know, but I just love to picture some of the conversations in my head when they got back to their dorm...
DrunkGuy: "Dude, you're never gonna *puke* believe what I just saw... There was a fucking alligator on campus"
SoberRoommate: "Yeah... right buddy... and I just saw a 6 foot tall pink fuckin' Easter bunny who said to tell you Howdy!"
Alas, all things must come to an end, and when I moved we took her to Wolf Pen Creek to return her to her natural environment. Three days later she tried to eat someone's poodle and animal control had to remove her and take her to the Navasota river drainage. It made the front page of our school newspaper and that issue is still one of my prized possessions.
Ahhhh.... college days.... I'm so fucking old...
Wanna know how to scare your ex? - 2005-03-12
Maybe I am not the sickest person out there. - 2005-02-23
I'm out of my funk and I'm not talking about hygiene. - 2005-02-11
Ding Dong the Sports Season is Dead. - 2005-02-07
Wow, is this thing still on? - 2005-01-31
1:52 p.m. || 2004-07-23
