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22 july 2003
currently reading
I'm heavy into an education textbook for the next two weeks. Ask me then, hm?
I have finally (finally) finished
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. If you ever get a chance to read this book, even if you read it as an ongoing project for awhile, DO IT. What an eye-opening, engaging history narrative. Makes me feel like my summer reading time was worthwhile!
current listening
Faint, Linkin Park
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cue noo-noo, noo-noo jaws theme music....now
There is heaps of stuff that I've written/am writing that I want to place here on the site. Recent adventures, summer snapshots...this has been a good summer. This is a good summer, in spite of the ever-changing and usually-abysmal weather, and the millipedes. How I remember the millipedes from my summers working in an Eastern North Carolina wilderness camps...yuck. Truly yuck. I gotta admit it--this living in the middle of the woods business takes some getting used to again. There are bugs. There are deer in my yard. I have to sweep my front porch. I mean, I don't have to sweep it, but I would like to avoid the stereotypical Southern debris-covered-porch-art look. You know what I'm talking about. It starts with leaf piles and dead millipedes. Then you put that fridge out front...then the upholstered chair....
Mm...no.
Anyway, this weekend. No good sailing weather, but we did get to go swimming in the lake. We enjoyed the Friday Night Fish Fry down the street, and filled ourselves with food and good neighborhood fellowship. During a swell conversation with some people we'd met last week, they casually mentioned the alligator that hung out under their pier over 4th of July weekend.
...Eh?
"Oh, yeah, alligator. We've never seen one actually in the lake before." [this lake is adjacent to a large state park swamp, and interconnected canals. The alligators are supposed to go there.] "Darndest thing!"
I was assured later that there were no alligators in the lake. In the thirty-some years he's been going there, he's never seen one in the lake. We'll be fine.
We went swimming on Saturday. Water was great. It was a nice day to swim.
This morning as I rinsed out my cereal bowl and looked outside, I saw a large object surface next to the pier, near where we swam yesterday.
"Hey, I just saw something. It's probably just a big snapper turtle, or a piece of yard debris. Sure is big, though. I wonder if it's an alligator." I'm sort of kidding. I'm trying to believe that the neighbors are full of poop, and there is not a gator lurking anywhere in the lake. I'm hoping that I will just be told, "take a powder," and my momentary uneasiness will subside. (Note: "The 1910 invention of B.C. Headache Powders in Durham [N.C.] may have been the city's first step toward the City of Medicine designation. Duke University Medical School opened in 1930."*.
We go outside and stand on the pier. The thing surfaces again. It is a big, wide, grandpappy alligator head. In the lake. Where we were swimming yesterday.
Man, I don't get weak in the knees too often. I just about lost my legs when I saw that critter this morning, though. Scared the living daylights out of me, big-lumpy-waiting-to-eat-me-in-two-big-chomps-gator-girl-eating-reptile that goes IN THE SWAMP NOT IN THE LAKE!
We called the state park wardens. They were pretty casual about it. Yep, gator in the lake. Gators were here before the people were. Don't throw chicken parts in the water. Might want to bring any pets indoors. Let us know if he gets ornery. Remember, no chicken parts in the water.
So that's where it stands at the moment. Gator's still in the lake. Not a thing we can do about it right now, except not feed him table scraps, pets and small children.
The theme this summer has been, "wildlife". Like, when I was down the beach in South Carolina a couple of months ago, and witnessed a four-foot hammerhead shark swim up to me in three feet of water. The mosquitoes this year are worse than I've ever seen them, and these millipedes...guh! So gross! Crunch, crunch, crunch under my feet! Bleck! One can only take so many powders. After awhile, nothing but a trip to the pesticide section of your local hardware store will do. That, and....hm...know of anyone who sells Gator-B-Gone? You know, something like fly paper, only longer, something you can throw in the lake and hope Mr. Gator sticks?
You can get back to me on that.
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