A brief note: I hate, hate, hate alligators and crocodiles. It is probably because when I was a child, my father thought it was funny to pretend to knock me into the alligator pit at the Staten Island Zoo while I stood on the wall, holding tightly to the brass rail, and stared down at dozens of enormous crocodiles in the cement pool below. Yes, coming up behind your daughter and grabbing her by the back and pretending you’re going to shove her over the rail—wow, that’s utterly hilarious. I also think that contributed to my fear of heights. That, and taking me on the Cyclone in Coney Island when I was about five.
But I digress. I feel bad for this poor woman:
US authorities say a 69-year-old Florida woman found a 2.5 metre long alligator prowling in her kitchen on Monday night.
Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa.
It then apparently waddled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen.
That’s eight feet long. There’s a picture at the link.
I may never complain again about ants in my kitchen.
I don’t think alligators would bother me all that much.
Scorpions, on the other hand (known to crawl into homes in Phoenix) scare the willies out of me.
In the last few years, there’ve been a couple of gator sightings in residential areas here in the bay area, but this one was by far the scariest.
Then again, not less than a year ago, in the park where I used to walk, there was a gator in a pond that was sealed off with…red tape. It was twenty yards or so from the walk path.
Eight feet long? Just check the scale and you’ll see what a croc this is.
That’s a sad story, Meryl. The worst my father did in that sort of situation was tell me that they fed the lions in the Detroit Zoo from children who didn’t stay close to their parents when they were visiting.
I give you now,Professor Twist
A conscientious scientist
Coleagues exclaim.”He never bungle.”
And pack him off to far flung jungles
One day,camped by the riverside
he up and missed his loving bride
She had,a guie informed him later
been eaten by an alligator
Professor Twist could not but smile,”You mean,”he said,”a crocodile