See Ya Later, Alligator

Evan has been having a hard time since his older brother and sister went back to school.

I can't tell you how many times a day I hear "Mom, I'm hungry!"

I keep telling him he isn't hungry, he's bored. He then, of course, falls to pieces and in the whiniest voice imaginable (that no one on this planet can decipher) tries to explain to me that he is STARVING and that if I don't feed him immediately, he will die.

I caught him yelling at his 15 month old sister because she wasn't playing dinosaur the right way (as in, she was grabbing the T-Rex and waddling over to the garbage and throwing it in instead of sitting down and making it eat the triceratops).

So last week, Tracy and I decided to take him over to the park to go "alligator hunting."

There is a really great park close by that, never fail, supplies an abundance of alligator sightings.

Now, it was Tracy's idea to go do this. I am not sure why I agreed to it, as I am a big scardy cat and constantly in fear that one of my children is going to be eaten by an alligator. And at this park, you don't stand on the edge of the lake and stare out at the water, hoping to catch a quick glimpse of a gator. You walk out on raised walkways OVER the water as the gators swim around you.

As you are walking along, there are little "piers" that you can go down that take you even farther out over the water. Each of these little piers are covered on the end and have a picnic table. You know, so you can sit and eat a last meal before being devoured by a gator.

As we walked down the walkway, this is what we saw:

A big blob of dried mud.,.....? That's odd, right? Well, it led to this....

Now, call me crazy, but that TOTALLY looks like a gator decided he was sick of swimming and wanted to go for a little walk, right?? (Oh, and I assume all alligators are men because they are ugly and mean)

It freaked me out. I looked over at Evan, who was standing about 5 feet from me. HE looked like gator bait, to me! I made him get up on the picnic table as I investigated the gator track. Tracy was at the end of the pier, looking out at the water.

"Ha! Someone lost s shoe." she said.

That's when the light bulb went off! I bet someone fell in the water (a genius I'm sure), lost their shoe (and probably peed their pants) and tracked the muddy print (probably intentionally making it look like an alligator had done it to scare fraidy cats like me) as they slithered back to their car, sans one shoe.

We stood there for a minute and, out of nowhere, up pops this gator. He was probably about 5 feet long or so. He just sat there at first. Floating about 20 feet away from us. Staring at us (probably trying to figure out which one of us he should eat as the appetizer).

He started swimming towards us. I made Evan get up on the picnic table again. He stopped, about 2 feet away from us. He just sat there (probably trying to decide which one of us he should eat for his entree). Evan kept saying "There it is! I see that al-e-gator! That's my first al-e-gator." It wasn't. He has seen like a million of them. He's weird sometimes. I let him get down as long as he promised to stand RIGHT beside me.

Then, the gator started moving. He swam under the wooden pier we were on. We could look through the slatted bottom and see him. He swam directly underneath us. If my arm could fit through the wooden planks, I could have touched him. I made Evan get back up on the picnic table. He kept saying "I can't see it! I can't SEEEE it!!" I ignored him. Evan was not on the menu!

Ok, so I did actually end up letting him down, but only after Tracy practically laid down on the walkway to peer through the little slats (and get a good picture)

And I figured she would, at the very least, slow the gator down long enough for me to throw Evan back up on the picnic table if he attacked. And YES I did actually think all of this while we were standing there.

We stayed there and watched him for about ten minutes. Then we left and headed back home. The whole way home, Evan talked about how he had just seen his first al-e-gator. It was "al-e-gator this and al-e-gator that."

I was so glad he had had a good time and had forgotten, at least for a short time, about being lonely. We walked through the door at home and he was still talking about the alligator. He climbed up onto the couch and he looked up at me with his adorable, green eyes and said "Mom! I'm hungry!"