North central Florida is noted for its summer deluges of liquid sunshine, which come and go without so much as a hint of warning. After a couple of weeks of these daily rains, the alligator pond, unfenced and fed to overflowing with water, would spill out onto the limestone road encircling the thing. Which meant that it also overflowed into our front yard, as well as the yards of the only other two residents in that tiny hammock. The shimmering black waters would creep all the way up to an old oak tree, a massive thing which was too big to cut down, so Dad just build the porch around it. Water moccasins liked to take up their summer homes inside that old tree, which had a gaping hole at the base of its trunk. It was always interesting trying to negotiate a clear, snake-less path to the newspaper box when we had too much rain. My poor dog, who never saw a leash most of the time, had to be tied up to the clothesline during the night to prevent becoming a fatality, and you might as well forget about the cat.
In this pond lived one sole resident, a huge grandaddy of an alligator well over twelve feet long. From time to time, I'd watch him as he climbed out of the water to sun, and then made his way around the entire limestone road which encircled the pond. He'd walk about four or five feet and rest, completely blocking the road to any and all traffic. Not that there ever was any, of course. He was a particularly commanding force in when and where you could play after school. As always, how close you could get to the actual pond when he was in it was only determined by the last time he ate.
See, to keep that relic of the dinosaur era somewhat less interested in eating our pets, and my baby sister, we fed him. Every week, Mom would buy a bag of inedible chicken parts from the local butcher, and I would skip out to the pond and throw a few pieces in, to figure out just where the alligator was. Usually by the third chicken neck, I knew exactly where he was. He would come closer and closer until I couldn't stand it any more, and I'd throw more.
After a few years, the beast recognized me as the bearer of all things yummy and would keep two watchful eyes out for my countenance at water's edge. In the beginning, if it got too close to the bank, I'd back away, stumbling over rocks and branches and my dog, who never quite got the whole picture as to why I was keeping this thing alive. After a while, my dog stopped trying to figure it all out and just sat high up on the bank, knowing that I would always save a scrap or two for her.
There was something there, between its ridged, narrow mouth and expressionless eyes that led me to sense that we had some sort of agreement. The gator started keeping to its own territory, even when the pond overflowed, and no longer felt the need to march up to our front doorstep in search of a furry feline morsel. As long as I made my weekly rounds, all was well in both our worlds.
That gator and I lived in peaceful co-existence for almost ten years before it was time for me to fly out of my comfortable nest. One day I went out to throw out chicken necks and there was no gator to throw them to. One of my neighbors was Ross Allen, who was a well-known herpetologist and he had been pressed by another of my neighbors, Bobbe Arnst, to rid our little hammock of the toothy threat. Ross Allen was the original Crocodile Dundee of the 40s, and he also had a penchant for alligator suitcases. With coils of heavy nylon rope and several rolls of duct tape, the alligator had been removed. Word had it that he was well over 17 feet long when he took a ride in the back of Allen's truck. I'd like to think he was relocated back to the Silver River, which we lived a scant few miles from, but the odds weren't in his favor. Alligators weren't on the endangered list back then.
Allen ended up buying property beside the old alligator pond, which he fenced in for protection, calling it a storm drain. He dug a new alligator pond and poured concrete, raising small alligators for his Ross Allen Reptile Institute attraction at Silver Springs. There were so many of them it looked like a miniature attraction all by itself. I visited them when I came back home, but never established any bond as I had with the old gator. Over time, and over additional pressure from new residents in our little hammock, those gators also disappeared. The pond was eventually filled in to make room for less threatening, and much less interesting, human development.
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