Gator bait

When but a wee sprout of a lad, one of my favorite things was to read the Sunday comics in the newspaper. And one of my favorites was “Pogo”, a strip about a ‘possum that lived in the Okefenokee Swamp where he and a bunch of friends would wax poetic about life in their watery world. One of those friends was Albert the Alligator. Yesterday I met Albert. And he seemed to be hungry.

Margaret and I left Savannah a couple of days ago and headed down to the extreme southeast corner of Georgia, an area that includes the Okefenokee Swamp. Given my love of “Pogo” so many years ago, I knew that I had to visit that much heralded area. It’s a 700 square mile area of swamps, forests and grasslands that teems with wildlife and has several miles of walking paths where you can get way back into the hinterlands and really commune with nature and all it has to offer.

After a couple of hours of watching birds, fish, snakes, lizards and their bigger Alligator cousins, we headed back to the car and started driving out of the park. A portion of the road goes right next to a drainage canal and while slowly driving along it, we spied a fairly good sized Alligator swimming slowly along. Since our walk through the swamp had not produced alligators close enough to get a good picture of, I elected to stop the car and see if I could get this one to say “cheese”.

With the plea from Margaret to “Be careful” still ringing in my ears, I grabbed my camera and headed toward the water and the hopefully grinning gator. At best, I expected to get a couple of snaps of the beast continuing its casual course down the waterway. I didn’t really expect it to take much of an interest in me. Well, no sooner did I get next to the water than my new best friend changed course and started heading straight toward me. Ok, so I moved away from the water and back toward the car. Pogo’s friend then headed back toward the middle of the canal. Having not yet gotten my 8 by 10 glossy of him, I then moved back to the edge of the canal, trusty camera at the ready. He then started heading toward me again. I, not being totally oblivious, again started ambling casually back to the car. He then replicated his return to the middle of the canal. Hoping the third time to be the charm, I once again approached the water. He repeated his twice previous movements. At this point, the intelligence of rocket science and brain surgery wasn’t necessary for me to get the message that maybe he wasn’t coming toward me just so I could get a good photo of his pearly whites. So, I snapped off a couple of quick pictures and retired to the safety of our 4000 pounds of Japan’s finest metal, hoping all the while that my reptilian friend didn’t possess the required opposable thumb and finger combination necessary to gain entry into our sanctuary.

As we drove away, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him once again in the middle of the canal, lazily floating off into the distance. Say “Hi” to Pogo for me, I said.

Perilously obtained pictures in the Current Pictures Gallery.