Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Alligators!!!

So Monday I woke up from a terrifying dream. Abby and I were watching a movie on a couch together. The couch for some reason was mostly submerged in a swamp. Abby was slouched on the couch in a sleeping bag. The movie was some weird movie with Mel Gibson as the dad of a family and he was always getting angry at his kids.

Now that we have all the facts lets move onto the content.

Think Jurassic Park meets Grumpy Old Men
While we were sitting on the couch watching the movie an alligator kept trying to bite Abby's legs and every time he would try Abby would bring her feet up on the couch and I would shoo the gator away. This happened a couple times and Abby always let her feet hang down in the swamp again. The last time the gator made a pass for Abby's legs he got the sleeping bag and started to pull her into the swamp. I reached down for her like it wasn't really a big deal and then he got hold of her legs! She started screaming and he pulled her under and I freaked out so I dove in after her and then...

I woke up breathing really heavy. It was kind of funny and kind of scary.

That day we decided to go to a state park nearby to go on a hike since I had the day off (I guess that's just the kind of compensation you get for working 8 days of 12 hour shifts in a row). When we got there we started the hike around the lake. At the trail head there was a sign warning hikers to stay away from the water since there were alligators in the lake. At the time I thought it was kind of funny and topical because of the dream I had just had the night before.

As we got further from the parking lot every noise seemed to be some animal that was coming to get us. Abby laughed at me for being so jumpy until we walked closer to the water's edge to get a better look at an informational sign about alligators and we heard a small splash in the water, as though an alligator was sunbathing and heard us coming so he slipped into the water. Then Abby wasn't laughing. She also wasn't laughing when we saw that nasty black snake slither into the water. And she definitely wasn't laughing when we had to cross those rickety bridges across the swamp and when we stepped on the bridges they sank into the water a little.
Gatorphobes beware!

Ok we were laughing a little, but if all those nature documentaries (I am a long time owner of the Planet Earth series) have taught me anything, it's that alligators are NOT to be messed with.