Chomp

There is a video of a guy being bitten by an alligator during a reptile show flying around the Internet and making the news circuit.
 I was at the show and saw the whole thing happen.
 It was kind of strange. 
 My best friend and I were sitting near the action watching two guys show off poisonous snakes and informing the crowd of the dangers of wild animals. Mostly, Guy #1 would talk about the animals and  the audience what to look for on snakes and how to recognize the  poisonous ones from the non-poisonous. When he had finished his lesson, Guy #2 would bring over a plastic box and pull out a living example of the reptiles. Both men used long clamp like devices to hold the snakes still while showing the crowd. The animals were out of the boxes for about 10 seconds. It was a safe display of the dangerous animals. 
 They guys also showed off baby alligators, they were cute. Their mouths were taped shut and face it, with the mouth taped up, an alligator is just a big lizard. 
 I’ve seen baby alligators before, heck I’ve held baby alligators, so I was a tiny bit board with that part of the show.
 So I started chatting with the people around me. 
 A semi drunk dude beside me pointed out a large alligator on the ground about 10 feet away from us. The man told me the alligator was not happy. I mentally put my self in the alligators shoes and thought well I wouldn't be happy with my mouth tied shut and either. 
 I asked drunk dude how he knew the alligator was upset.
 He replied “it’s too still."
 What?
  I ask him if he was an alligator whisperer or something and why he thought the beast's body language meant it was upset. 
. He told me he had been hunting in Louisiana several times for the animals and that the animal’s tail was curved and it’s arm were in a position of agitation, like it was ready to spring on prey. 
  He also told me how large an alligator it took to make boots (8 feet long) and that gator tasted good. (I’ve tried it, too chewy for me.) 
   Dude had a thick English/Scottish/Irish/ or something accent, and I couldn't decipher some of his statements so I just nodded and turned back to the show. 
 I had to step away from the show for a few minutes so i missed the reptile guys bringing the alligator out. 
 When I did return. Guy #2 was messing with the business end of the alligator. I thought Guy #2  was about to loose a hand (or at least some fingers) by swatting the beast on it's un-taped nose. So my attention was captured. (Come on, who isn't going to watch some idiot possibly loose a finger or two.)
 While Guy # 2 was tempting the alligator with finger snacks, Guy #1 began walking up behind the animal. 
 In a flash Guy #1 had an alligator hanging off his elbow then he was on the ground. 
 It was weird. 
 I heard a clap and then realized the alligator had bitten Guy #1. 
 The bite didn’t impress me. The fact the alligator pulled a full grown man from a standing position to the ground in under a second did. 
 There was a gasp and some screams when the gator got Guy #1, but I was frozen watching the scene play out.
 Guy #1 was released from the beast’s jaws and walked off for a second leaving Guy #2 to stare down the gator and continue to whop the thing on the nose. Guy #2 would tap the top of the animals nose then reach under it’s jaw and close the mouth. ( Apparently the gator didn't have a problem with Guy #2 and didn't try to chomp again.)
 Finally Guy #1 came back to the animal and both men were able to close the gaping mouth of the giant and tape it shut rendering it harmless.
 Guy #1 then was led away by a nurse in biker garb to tend his wounds. 
 This left Guy #2 to deal with getting the beast out of the area.  
 It took three men to lift the animal onto the bed of a golf cart like vehicle. Only two of the men looked like they knew what they were doing. The third guy looked like he was a bit drunk and just wanted to pick up an alligator.   
 Whoosh, the cart wheeled the gator away and things began to calm down.
 My friend and I hung out for a half hour longer a band began to play and people began to dance like nothing had happened.
 I glanced at the place the gator had bit Guy #1. 
 There was a puddle of blood on the dance floor.  
 I knew the event would end up online, I didn’t expect it to go national. 
 I just wish I had been smart enough to have recorded the event. 
 So next time I see a couple of guys tempting an alligator or some other large meat eating animal I’ll whip out my phone and hit record. Because who doesn’t want to see an idiot tempting fate, get a bite of reality.   

To see the video click this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnTFvKt_7lI

Beary Exciting

“There’s a bear in the house!” is a phrase you never want to hear in the middle of the night or anytime.
Yup, I’ve heard it.
At 2 am.
On vacation.
The trip was not the same after that.
We were staying at my family’s vacation house in Colorado when the invasion happened.
Bear sightings were a daily thing within the town limits and the animals remained outside of residences and businesses, so they were tolerated. Some townspeople celebrated the abundance of animals by forming as society called “Friends of the Bears” and selling t-shirts.
 Mostly they were a nuisance.
 The town bakery sustained damage when a large brown bear tried to rip its back door off one night in search of food. (No fresh bread for customers the next day.) The single screen movie theater had damage to its trash containers and building several nights later. Wildlife experts were warning campers to store their food inside vehicles away from tents. (The local auto glass guy had a booming business that year because bears would break car windows to get to any food they could smell. Bears have a great sense of smell.)
  It was exciting to be so enveloped in wildlife, and we enjoyed seeing the bears wander over our property from the safety of our house. We would drive around at dusk to watch bears emerge from the forest and plod down roads and into the trash of unsuspecting tourist who left the cans outside. (We were smart. Our trash cans were locked in our utility room inside our house. No way for a bear to get them there!) It was going great.
 Until the night a bear decided our house was a great place for eats.
 We left a small window open in the family room at the bottom of the stairs that night for air circulation throughout the house.  (It was hot that summer and the house had no air conditioner.) The opening wasn’t large at all, approximately four inches. The window worked like a sliding glass door and moved silently on a track. We felt safe leaving it open because none of us thought a bear would be smart enough to open it.
 Wrong.
  A small brown bear used his paw to slide the window open, crawled right into our house and made his way to our kitchen.
 My father heard the animal first as his room was closest to the kitchen.  Dad got up to investigate, thinking my nephew's fishing trip preparations were responsible for the racket. Since dad was going to berate my nephew (the only other male in our cabin) he didn’t bother putting on a robe; he just marched into the kitchen in his tighty whities.
 It wasn’t my nephew that Dad saw when he turned on the light.
 The bear was standing on our kitchen counter licking grease out of the collection container I used for bacon drippings. (I’m southern, we were on vacation, everything was cooked in  bacon grease, don’t judge!) It froze when the light came on and took one brief look at Dad, then sailed over the counter onto the dining table - promptly knocking it over.
 As soon as the table went thud my dad yelled, “There’s a bear in the house!”
 I was in the bunk room upstairs sleeping soundly until Dad’s hollerin' woke my little dog. Stinky quickly jumped into action by barking as loud as he could and bolting downstairs.
 Between Dad’s announcement and Stinky’s barking I awoke thinking, “What the heck?” So I grabbed my glasses and chased after Stinky.
  I found Stinky on the stairway landing yapping his head off at the bear. The bear was across the room and Stinky knew better than to get too close. I, however, thought across the room was still too close for my dog, so I swooped Stinky up and headed back upstairs.
 Like in every bad horror movie, I slipped halfway up the stairs and face planted into the carpet. I could hear some ruckus behind me over Stinky’s barking but I wasn’t about to stop and look back. It was save my baby time and this mama was on a mission.
 After clamoring  up the rest of the stairs I finally made it into the bunk room and slammed the door behind me. Thinking quickly, I shoved my daughters onto the top of a bunk bed and ordered my niece to help me push the dresser against the door. (In retrospect, throwing the kids under the bed might have been a smarter move.)
 By the time the dresser was in place, downstairs was buzzing.
 While I was saving the dog, my dad was running through the house opening doors so the bear could get out. My nephew had awoken and was out of  his room brandishing his fishing knife and a stick, in case things got ugly. (He didn’t bother with pants either, just boxer briefs.) My mother was yelling at my dad, my nephew was running around trying to help Dad and the bear finally had enough of us and went out the same way he came in.
 The whole event lasted about three minutes.
 We were up till 4 am from the adrenaline rush.
 The next day the game warden came out and set up a trap. The little beast was caught and relocated far away from town. The window was kept shut and the bacon grease was thrown away from that point on.
   I couldn’t sleep well for the rest of the vacation. Not because I was scared of another invasion, but because with the window shut, it was too hot and kept having horrible flash backs. Of my dad, running around in his undies. Gack!