Fred the Alligator

I still have a couple of cats and a couple of dogs I want to talk about before I abandon this obsession of reminiscence about what my crazy old cowboy uncle used to refer to as my "livestock," but today seemed like the perfect, dreary day to talk about the most unusual pet my kids ever had.  One day my cousin David was fishing in a bayou somewhere between Houston and Galveston.  He came across an abandoned nest of alligator hatchlings.  The mother had probably been poached for illegal shoes and purses.  He couldn't rescue them all, but good old David decided my kids needed a new pet - like a cat and four dogs weren't enough?

He brought said creature over after the kids and I had gone to bed.  He and my husband decided the best temporary domicile would be our bathtub.  About 2:00 am I had to get up to use the restroom.  Eyes bleary with sleep and nearsightedness, I was totally unaware of my surroundings. Something to my left made a "s-s-s-s-s-ach-ach-ach" sound. I looked over and saw a prehistoric reptile rearing its ugly head in my bathtub.  I instinctively left my seat in mid-stream, literally, and landed on the cold tile floor.  I gathered my jangled nerves, cleaned myself up, found a fresh night gown, glared at the demon long enough to decide it would not be a long term resident, and went back to bed.  

 Next morning, the kids were wild with excitement - it was almost impossible to get them to settle down to breakfast. They couldn't get home from school soon enough.  I have no idea why, but they named it (gender undetermined) Fred.  There was no real emotional bonding on Fred's part, but the kids were entranced.  They dug up an old cat collar, and made a leash from a length of cotton clothesline rope.  For the next three months, Fred lived in an old washtub in the garage, and my kids were the sensation of the neighborhood, taking their alligator for walks on a leash.  Even the neighborhood bully was in awe.

Fred consumed a great deal of hamburger and rapidly outgrew his home. When it became clear that Fred was growing into something that would soon be looking at my kids as lunch, I demanded that David donate him to the Houston zoo.  Instead, David returned him or her to the bayou where it lived out its days being an alligator, hopefully never becoming a pair of alligator boots.  The kids mourned about an hour.  I think they had begun to realize Fred's carnivorous potential, and I mourned not at all.