Alligator Tale

‘Smile mum, don’t look so nervous. Say Miami.

Three, two, one ….. Miameeee. 

Sunny Miami!’

Thud.

That was the instant that changed everything, including our plans for the rest of the holiday. Until then, we had been doing the usual touristy things, soaking up the sun and enjoying the apricot marmalade light of early evening as we walked among the swaying palms.  Our bodies moved against a backdrop of the vast hazy blue sky and lapping sea. Multi-coloured pastel buildings, tan bodies in earnest activity, all surrounded us like a comforting blanket, reassuring us that we were somewhere different to home.  The digital memory of my phone was already at brimming point with images of beach huts, snazzy sports cars and riverside mansions too perfect to be populated.

I had insisted on taking the children to the Everglades for the day. We endured the car journey to get there and the queue in the heat, relieved to be finally seated on the boat tour. After gliding through the still waters, skimming through reeds and exclaiming at the fairy-like birds swooping in and away from our boat, we alighted and shuffled our way along with the other visitors, obediently following the signs to the ‘Alligator Show’.

Sitting in a white open air amphitheatre, we listened to the alligator expert telling us lots of facts that he told us we could probably all google. He held a long staff with which he liked to tease the alligators. I had the impression we were being given a presentation masterclass on how evoke Gandalf, Indiana Jones and Crocodile Dundee all in one. His jokey style was delivered with a fitting deep booming voice, inducing a regular ripple of chuckles from us as if he were a conductor with his orchestra. Although the orchestra members were not exactly heaving with exuberance, they offered the right amount of cooperation perfectly on cue.

He delivered his key takeaway messages.  Alligators are not crocodiles! Why do you need me to tell you what you can look up online? The Miami police take the welfare of alligators very seriously and anyone attempting to kidnap, kill or trade in them without permission will be punished with a hefty fine or imprisonment.  All the alligators in the show are rescues, and the staff are all volunteers, so any contributions to the good work of the organisation will be very appreciated, thank you. He waved his wand towards a smeared acrylic box at the front containing a layer of coins and a few crisp notes of different colours.

His assistant, an athletic, brown muscled young man with a laid-back smile, moved confidently around the alligators, in unison with the Big Wizard’s words. Gasps rushed round the arena as he placed his arms around one giant alligator’s snout and prised its jaws wide, revealing a phenomenal array of pointy, tobacco-stained teeth shards. 

The sun was beating down on my face; my throat was dry. Seeing those alligators all heaped close to each other, just like we were in the audience, made me suddenly feel uncomfortable. My shoulder blades felt itchy and a line of sweat trickled down my back.

Next, we filed out, straight into a zoo-like group of small enclosures.  There was a barren feel to some of them. Maybe the heat had forced a gecko into its hole. Maybe a python had died and the wardens had found it too difficult to purchase a successor.

In a corner, stood a young male next to a sign which read, ‘Get your photo with a baby alligator - $20’

I thought of all the snapshots I had taken already of my children on the beach, smiling in front of a burnt pink lifeguard hut, wind blowing their hair horizontally across their laughing faces. The group shots of us in front of candy coloured Art Deco buildings, with slightly fixed wooden smiles because we didn’t know exactly when my husband would press the shutter button.

‘Let’s do that!’ I said to my children without hesitation.

We stepped into the shady enclosure and the bored young man, dressed in a limp white grey T-shirt and baggy shorts, perked up as we approached.  He went to a wooden cage, reached inside and pulled out the baby alligator.

‘You go first, mum!’

The young man held out the alligator with both hands, as if handing me a plush towel at a luxury spa reception.

I felt my first flicker of nerves. Why was I doing this? The other tourists had passed straight through, keen to get refreshments in the blistering heat. No doubt some of them, after having sated their initial curiosity to see some alligators, didn’t want to linger in a sorry half-empty animal enclosure. Weren’t we all meant to be over this animal slavery for mere entertainment. The show had been educational, but this was overstepping it, I knew that.

I would handle this small creature with compassion. But with speed, just enough for a good image of me looking brave and adventurous.

Presenting my arms forward,  the young man placed the baby alligator gently on both my raised palms. It felt weighted, like a large slab of kneaded pastry, neither too cold nor too hot, a perfect temperature that comforted my hands. I had been expecting to feel rough scales, but instead, the thick skin was of a smooth firmness not unlike the palms it rested on.  The alligator weight kind of sank into my hands. Not tense, relaxed but not floppy. For me a new sensation. For it, a familiar routine of repetitive to-ing and fro-ing, which it accepted passively in exchange for food and rest, knowing no other life in the wild.

Once used to the feel, I opened my squinted eyes to gaze at the face of this new friend. Its eyes and long snout were right there, in my hands. All of a sudden, I looked into the round, glassy, still eye and thought back to the giant alligator jaws of the show. Could this little alligator be doing what in nature it did best, lying low and still until the perfect moment when Snap! It would open its jaws and sink its little spiky daggers into my flesh?

‘Smile mum, don’t look so nervous. Say Miami.

Three, two, one ….. Miameeee. 

Sunny Miami!’

I looked up to face the camera and remembered to unfrown my face and hold the alligator a little less than at arm’s length. Wait, I thought. Where is the alligator’s mouth? As soon as the creature was no longer in my sight, my trust and self-control drained from me, leaving in their place just pure fear.

Snap!

Thud!

‘No, no, mum, what are you doing!’ My children shrieked.

I had flipped apart my hands apart instinctively. They felt weightless and when I looked down, they were empty. I had dropped the poor animal. I refocused my eyes further down and saw the grey-brown baby predator right next to my feet, turning its head side to side, looking afraid.  The slits of its eyes were on me the whole time ready for me to make the first move.

‘Aagh!’ I jumped up high in fright to escape any quick dart of the small beast onto my body for revenge. This happened at the same time that the young assistant dived in low to try to grab the creature. I closed my eyes and panicked, landing on something that was not flat ground. Was it the keeper’s hand? I couldn’t be sure and a flash of irritation passed through me. ‘Aagh!’ I jumped up and down again. ‘Get it away from me!’ Perhaps I was thinking about the keeper’s hand.

‘No, mum, no!’

So that, then, is how I came to kill a baby alligator on holiday.

What came after was a hazy few hours of police sirens and questioning. I filled out endless forms with my name, address, hotel, reasons for being in Miami, over and over again, resulting in me being judged responsible for the death of one baby alligator, sentenced to two nights in jail and a hefty fine. To make the time pass, I kept thinking of the afternoon I could have had instead if I had passed straight through to the shop refrigerators filled with chilled drinks, the doors leading at the same time out onto the hotel balcony with its sweeping vistas of North Beach and fresh crashing waves.

That time in the cell has been airbrushed in my mind. A defence to forget the humiliating powerlessness I felt.

Some memories stick with me, like when a police guard slows down in front of me seated and pans his gun muzzle across my face, inviting me to startle back. The way they look beneath my face when they speak to me as if my breasts are my only measure of worth to them. The watery scrambled eggs; they could have been for breakfast, lunch or dinner, with the splodge of watery ketchup and that bluebottle stuck in it, legs still twitching.

A journalist visited me in the cell to ask my side of the story and to take a photo.

Later, much later, back in London, my children would talk about this day, laughing, one of their favourite stories to tell about me. They had kept the news article published in the local Miami Herald, written along the lines of ‘Stupid Brit blunders again in our precious nature reserves!’ There, a photo of me, looking pale and resigned to my fate, head sticking out through the bar grille doors.

I too, join in with the general bantering tone at dinner parties, deep down relieved that I have something interesting to say about myself. The story never fails to entertain. It beats all those times before when I had to go through the motions, one eye on the clock as I finished dessert, feeling empty.

I have lived, I can say. I have been in prison. I wrestled with an alligator. Everyone understands it was just an accident.

But when I am away from the parties, alone and lost in thought, I wonder, if that day, in that moment, I wasn’t just afraid. Perhaps, deep down, in my subconscious, I had a powerful impulse to do something altogether crazy, attention grabbing and dangerous. That need had to be satisfied right there right then. 

I often drift back to that day. The flashbacks can visit me at any time, without warning, but they always remind me of the lasting effect that single moment has had on my world order of things.

I am haunted by having killed that adorable, helpless young creature. 

Every now and then, during the onset of winter, the shop window displays change and I eye a spotlit pair of pointed heeled shoes in that unmistakeable pattern. Even though I know they are of course fake, it never fails to hit me, particularly when they are in shades of grey or brown. Call them croc, alligator or whatever leather, when I glance at the items, a shudder runs through my entirety. I see the image as clear as any phone-captured photo, of a long alligator, draped across my feet, neck twisted, jaw open and still, marble eyes looking up at me as if in a silent, knowing chuckle. An in-joke that we share between us, and that no-one else, will never ever truly get to know.

This story was inspired by the thought that life can change in an instant, due to an unexpected event that ends up becoming a defining moment in one’s life. I wonder reader, do you have any ‘what if that hadn’t happened’ moments? I’d love to hear.