<FONT face=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-2>September 25, 2005</FONT>
<FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size=3><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica
size=+1>Chhhhhomp! Hey, wait! It's my boat!</FONT>
<FONT face=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-2>By Bobby
Cleveland
</FONT><FONT face=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-2>bcleveland@clarionledger.com
</FONT>
You
know that sound of a fingernail being scraped across a blackboard and how it
bothers you to the very core to hear it, making you scrooch-up not only your
face but your whole body?
<TABLE cellPadding=5 align=right>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD align=middle></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>That's kind of what it feels
like when you hear an alligator bite an aluminum boat, and then grind on
it.
Chomp! chomp!
Scraaaaaaape!
It makes you shudder inside
and outsi ...
"Hey, wait just a #@&%@&% minute.
"That's my #@%^@&% boat
that #@&%@&% alligator is chewing on."
"Bob," Woodie Reaves said,
"he seems to like how it tastes. I hope you're not too partial to that pretty
blue paint job on the gunnel there.
"Oh, wait, there goes the rubber bumper guard. He got that, too."
I
wasn't laughing and quickly surveyed the situation.
"Hey, get my trolling motor out of the water!" I hollered. "Quick, before
that #@&%@&% alligator bites the #@&%@&% foot off
it."
The bad part of the whole situation was that it wasn't even 8 p.m.
yet and we were only getting started. This gator was just a warm-up for
us.
At 8-feet, despite having a mouth full of boat-scraping teeth, this
one would be cut loose so, I guess, he could grow and get even meaner, and so we
could go catch one that would finish off my #@&%@&% boat.
"The big boys we're looking for don't even come out good until 10 or so,"
Reaves said. "Just imagine what an 11- or 12-footer will be like."
<FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" color=#cc0000 size=-1>'... need a
bigger boat'</FONT>
Reaves was playing Capt. Quint to my Chief Brody.
"Well, Quint," I
said, "we're going to need a bigger boat.
"We are going in to get a
bigger boat right? Aren't we?"
Of course, I really didn't think we needed a boat bigger than my 181/2-foot
Tracker. You know, the one that used to have the pretty blue paint
job.
Any boat other than mine would do just fine, thank you.
I'm still trying to get all the carp crap out of it from my run-in with the
flying silver fish on the Mississippi River earlier this summer.
And,
now, this.
<FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" color=#cc0000 size=-1>Humbling
thought</FONT>
Seriously, though, until that irate 8-foot alligator started chewing on my
boat, I hadn't really grasped exactly what it was we were doing.
We were
in a battle with a creature that could, in the wrong situation, eat me.
That was a very humbling moment for me.
I'm telling you, that freaking
alligator tried to eat my freaking boat.
Now, granted I'm a big ol' boy,
but I am not near as big as my bass boat. If that stupid gator was mad enough,
or bad enough, to try and eat a boat, and we were looking for one at least a
third again as big, well, by all means ...
Fortunately, our night ended with a total of 15 feet of alligator. That
8-footer that Lee Benoist caught and a 7-footer that I later reeled in and
released.
Oh, well, season doesn't end until tonight.
Maybe a bigger boat is in order.</P></FONT>