There’s a sign posted in a small swamp at the corner of McNeely and Lake. It’s clearly posted on a tattered piece of wood in brightly painted red letters: No swimming: alligators.
Thanks for the warning, my mysterious friend. I have one question, though. How did you, protector of pedestrians, discover alligators in our own Carleton Place?
I really don’t care how he found out, I’m just glad someone had the good sense to warn us. In order to be fully prepared in case of alligator attack, I did some investigation:
Common names of our alligator friends: Mississippi alligator,(alligator mississippiensis) Pike-headed alligator, "gator": Alligator is derived from the Spanish el lagarto which means "the lizard" mississippiensis means "of the Mississippi (River)", derived from mississippi + ensis (Latin for "belonging to") the Mississippi River”
So that's how the alligators got here! It’s obvious, don’t you see? Mississippi. That’s all it is. The poor, confused creatures just got the wrong region, that’s all. They are from the Mississippi River region, and we've got our own Mississippi here. Those poor water lizards just managed to land in the region of the lesser known, not-so-mighty Mississippi River, a la Lanark County.
Maybe they’re on vacation. It's so obviously a simple error of 'wrong turn' at the Florida Keyes or something. They are also obviously male gators, since they didn't stop for directions.
No wonder they hide in holes in the swamp. It must be dang cold for those gators. Bet they wouldn’t have come if someone had told them the truth about Lanark County winters.
Of course, this means, when it warms up, they will venture to the surface of the swamp and they’ll be hungry. So I did the only responsible thing I could do. I looked up how to protect myself from these predatory creatures.
Rule number one to survive an alligator attack: Stay away from areas that they are known to live. Great – so now I can no longer get my vitamins from Shopper’s Drug Mart. Too close to the alligator watering hole.
The next question is, how do we get rid of these carnivorous creatures? How do we make it safe to walk on that corner? How do we browse for a new car without fear of being an ankle appetizer for the hungry gators?
Stilts won’t help. I imagine their teeth and jaws, with a reported bone-crunching pressure of
something like 3,000 pounds per square inch – well, stilts are just toothpicks or chopsticks to the to the gator kin.
Here’s one thing I know. If it weren’t for the kindness of the stranger who posted that danger sign, maybe a bunch of people would be lost by now, their tombstones reading ‘gator bait’.
I wonder how many of us would be walking down that street, checking out the wonder of the swamp, batting at mosquitoes, maybe wondering if leeches live in there too, when suddenly what should have been a nice handbag or groovy shoes jumps from the water to ask you if you’d rather give up your white meat or your dark meat first?
Thank you, kind stranger. Thank you for braving the swamp to post the sign. Thank you for taking your life in your hands to warn us of the amphibious dangers that lurk on the corners of our Lanark county streets.
