Alligators are real ugly, especially up close. But before telling you about the alligator, I’d better tell you about the new outboard. Gillian and I had made a deal. She would get new upholstery for the sofa and chairs. I would get a new outboard for the dinghy, replacing the 3 horsepower Johnson that came with Jazz. After 20-odd years (in outboard years this is nearly a hundred) the Johnson was ready for retirement. It would refuse to start whenever it was really needed, and was reluctant to keep running for long without a break. Sometimes it took thirty or forty pulls on the starter cord.
The problem with replacing it was, which one to choose? At least, thanks to PK, I knew which brand to get. PK is a citizen of the sea and knows about outboard motors. He’s been sailing the world for a decade or so on his sailboat Stormy Monday. We were having a drink on Jazz, and the subject of outboard motors came up, as it tends to do whenever anyone present has an unreliable one. PK put it succinctly, I thought.
“There are only three brands to choose from,” he said in his cultured British accent. “Yamaha, Yamaha, or Yamaha.”
As a result, a little while later, Gillian and I were looking at a row of outboards in the Yamaha store in Conway, SC. I liked the 5 horsepower four-stroke. Quiet, fuel-efficient, and environmentally friendly. The trouble was it weighed fifty-five pounds, plus fuel tank. On the next rack, I saw a 3 horsepower two-stroke weighing thirty-eight pounds, fuel tank included. The dinghy is a hundred pounds, so the decision boiled down to, did I want to winch 155 pounds or 138 pounds. I voted with my back, determined to never see another chiropractor, and chose the 3 horsepower.
I’m delighted with the Yamaha. Its reliability has let us explore much further afield, as it were. I can winch the dinghy aboard with the motor attached. It starts on the first pull every time, and seems willing to run forever. You’re probably wondering what all this outboard stuff has to do with alligators — I was just getting to that.
Early in January, Jazz was anchored in the Little Shark River south of Tarpon Bay in the Everglades National Park. We were deep in the park, five miles up the river from the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by sixty-foot red mangroves and not much else. We’d been there for a few days and had seen no other boats.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Gillian would say. A little later it would be my turn. “I love it here. Peaceful. Look at these mangrove roots. Let’s stay another day.”
The weather was perfect. Clear and dry. Not quite warm enough for swimming but not cold enough for sweaters. We saw only one mosquito. He was slow and stupid and I squished him. There were no other bugs of any sort and perhaps as a consequence, very few birds.
One sunny afternoon Gillian and I were dinghying around, exploring a little no-name creek, when we saw an alligator lying on a mud bank catching some rays. The creek was narrow and as we came around the bend we were less than twenty feet away from him.
I have to confess I don’t have much experience with alligators. I even wonder if this particular alligator was normal, or deranged in some way.
What concerned me was that instead of ignoring us or running away or looking alarmed, this guy got to his feet and came right at us. And he was fast. Before you could say “uh, oh” he was in the water ten feet from the dinghy, staring at us. You’re going to think I’m exaggerating, but he had to be 12 feet long. He was at least two feet longer than our dinghy. His jaws looked big enough to bite the dinghy in two. I didn’t like this at all. We could see his eyes— cold, calculating, merciless. I could see him thinking, eyeing Gillian in the bow and myself in the stern, “Lookee here, lunch and dinner.”
I was thinking I should have bought the 5 horse or maybe the 50 horse. Whispering, “Go, girl,” I cranked our little 3 horse to full emergency power. I’m glad to be able report that we got away safely. As far as I know the alligator made no attempt to catch us, perhaps because he could see that I was holding one of our wooden oars like a club, with every intention of jamming the whole thing down his ugly throat if he got any closer. It might have even slowed him down for a minute or two while he chewed it up as an appetizer.
How fast can an alligator swim anyway? Maybe we were too fast for him as our little outboard hurled us downstream to safety at three miles an hour. On reflection, this doesn’t seem too likely. Maybe he just wasn’t hungry enough to give chase.
“Whew, that was scary. Did you see his teeth? We’re not going back there again. Was he ever ugly,” Gillian said, summing it up perfectly. She was right. He was ugly. I mean really ugly, especially up close. If you want to see for yourself, he lives at 81 00.63 West and 25 24.25 North, according to our hand-held GPS. I’ve been told that he wasn’t actually being aggressive but just felt safer in the water.
This theory really should be tested. Not by me, you understand. You might want to go there and just hang out. See what happens after he gets in the water. But remember he’s not only ugly, he’s fast. If I were you, before going anywhere near there, I’d give some thought to getting a bigger outboard.
Press BACK on your Browser or Home