Chapter 7 #2
Ida Belle pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “That does it. I’m calling the state mental hospital.”
Gertie grabbed a handful of cookies off a plate on the kitchen counter and headed for the door. “See for yourself.”
I started to stop her, but Ida Belle waved one hand at me and pulled a .
45 out of Gertie’s purse with the other.
We followed Gertie onto the porch, and the alligator looked up at us and flicked his tail back and forth.
And sure enough, he was staring right at Gertie.
She started down the steps and I began to panic.
“That’s far enough,” I said when she was halfway down.
The gator was only five feet away. Ida Belle was a crack shot, but any closer and safety would have been questionable given how quickly the alligator could move.
Gertie tossed a cookie at the gator and he opened his mouth and caught it midair, then chomped on it a time or two before opening his mouth again, apparently wanting seconds.
Gertie obliged with another cookie until she was down to the last one.
Then she jumped off the remaining two steps and leaned over to drop the last cookie in the gator’s mouth before climbing back up the stairs to stand between Ida Belle and me.
“Holy crap,” I said. “Surely there’s a law about feeding alligators cookies or having alligators in your home or something.”
Despite the gator’s seemingly passive view of Gertie, I didn’t trust it for a second. Sinful had all sorts of odd laws, and if one of them got the gator off her property and back in the bayou where it belonged, then I was all for it.
“There’s all sorts of laws about this sort of thing,” Ida Belle said. “Mostly state. You can’t just take protected wildlife home for a visit and you darned sure can’t keep him.”
“It’s just until the poacher’s caught,” Gertie argued.
“But does he have to stay here?” I asked. “Can’t you put the pants back on him and relocate him away from Sinful?”
Gertie shook her head. “Alligators are territorial. I can’t just drop him somewhere else. It would be like dropping a Crip off in Blood territory.”
Somehow, I didn’t think alligators fell into the same pattern as LA gangs, but I sorta got the point. “What about a wildlife refuge? Even you have to agree that you can’t keep him in your house.”
“Of course not,” Gertie said. “That’s what I needed you guys for. I have an old plastic pond liner that I was going to use to make him a place to get in water in the yard. I just need a hole big enough to put it in.”
“You called us over here, on emergency status, to dig a hole for an alligator pond?” Ida Belle asked. “Just put the liner on the ground, throw in some water, and pitch his butt over in it.”
“The edge is about a foot and a half high,” Gertie said. “He might hurt himself getting in and out.”
“He just ran through a bathroom door and a shed,” I said. “I think he can manage a one-foot drop onto grass or into water.”
“He ran through the bathroom door?” Gertie asked.
I stared. “Yeah. Do you think I opened the door and invited him to play tag?”
Ida Belle shook her head. “When Carter finds out you’ve got a gator in your backyard, you know he’s going to haul it right back into the bayou.”
“He won’t find out if we don’t tell him,” Gertie said.
I held up my hands. “Oh, rest assured, I’m not about to offer up this debacle, but your neighbors can see into your backyard. And I’m going to go ahead and guess that they won’t look favorably on your new choice of pets, especially when I’ve been shooting at it.”
“Given that they’ve known Gertie for decades,” Ida Belle said, “they’ll probably call when she starts digging the hole, even if they didn’t see any of the rest.”
Gertie put her hands on her hips. “You have one little miscalculation with explosives and everyone’s a critic. How was I supposed to know the hole needed to be twice as deep?”
Since most of Gertie’s yard looked professionally landscaped, I’d always wondered about the somewhat bare spot off to the right.
I guess I’d gotten my answer. I looked at Ida Belle, who was staring at the gator and frowning, and then at Gertie, who was staring at the gator and I swear was starting to tear up.
Damn it. I knew I was going to regret it, but before I could change my mind, I blurted out, “Why don’t you keep him at my house? The bayou is right there. If he’s really as tame as you think, he won’t go far, right? If he does, then so be it. You can’t change nature and you shouldn’t try to.”
Gertie perked up. “Will you feed him?”
“Heck no, I won’t feed him. I may never go in the backyard again. And I’ll have to reinforce my doors.”
“I can come over and feed him every day.” Gertie’s eyes widened. “Oh, even better, I could stay with you until this has all blown over. That way, I’d be on hand to make sure Godzilla doesn’t misbehave.”
“Who’s going to make sure you don’t misbehave?” Ida Belle asked.
“I’m not a child,” Gertie said, “and besides, it’s Fortune’s house. She’s in charge.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My only experience in dealing with those who misbehave has been to shoot them. I really don’t want to shoot you.”
“You two drive me crazy.” Gertie spun around and headed into the house. “I’m going to take that casserole out and feed Godzilla. He’ll travel better with a full stomach.”
Ida Belle looked at me and sighed. “What in the world have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Trouble. But that’s nothing new.”
It was one thing to offer my backyard to house Gertie’s alligator.
It was a whole other issue figuring out how to get the gator to my yard.
The trunk of Gertie’s car was completely gone now, so that option was out.
Ida Belle would have allowed Celia to drive her new vehicle before she let an alligator in it, and my Jeep was completely open, so no way of hiding what we were doing.
And hiding was the most important part of this mission. Hiding and not dying.
A search of Gertie’s yard and a little ingenuity produced a plan. Not a great plan, but it was better than carrying the thing down the middle of the street wrapped in a sheet. That might attract attention.
In the back of Gertie’s shed was an odd sort of boat canoe thingie.
Ida Belle called it a peerow, but I figured I must have heard wrong.
That didn’t sound like a good name for a boat at all.
Regardless, it was long enough to hold the alligator and had sides high enough to camouflage Godzilla as long as he stayed put.
It sat on a small trailer that could be easily pulled behind my Jeep so all that was left was to get the gator in the peerow, cover it up, take it to my house, and get it in the backyard before anyone noticed what we were doing.
Simple.
Unless, of course, you’re trying to shove a live alligator into a boat and get it through a suburb without being seen.
Gertie distracted Godzilla with a loaf of bread, and we hauled the peerow out of the shed and into the backyard.
Once it was in place, and we were a safe distance away from Godzilla, I had to ask.
“Okay, I get the ‘row’ part of the name, but what’s with the ‘pee’?
I refuse to accept that you mean that literally. ”
Ida Belle looked at Gertie, and they started to laugh.
“It’s spelled p-i-r-o-g-u-e,” Ida Belle said. “It’s one of those words the Cajuns adopted, hence the pronunciation. Think of it as Cajun for canoe.”
I had zero idea how one got “peerow” from “pirogue,” but I wasn’t about to get into a language discussion, especially over anything that people in Louisiana had adjusted to suit themselves. With all the cultures mixed together, that path would produce nothing but more confusion.
I looked at the gator and the pirogue. “How are we going to get him in it? I don’t think he’s going to voluntarily climb in, even for a cookie.”
“We can lift him in,” Gertie said. “He’s not that heavy.”
“I’m not putting my hands on that thing,” Ida Belle said. “Fortune’s cat ran across my foot last week and it bled for a good fifteen minutes. That thing’s claws would shred a foot clean off.”
“We’ll use the pants sling, like I did before,” Gertie said. “There’s a couple tears in it from the trip here, but nothing I can’t patch with a little thread.”
“You want to take time out to sew?” Ida Belle asked. “Grab some duct tape and let’s get this over with.”
Ten minutes and a roll of duct tape later, we had a sorta sturdy sling that might possibly, I hoped, hold the alligator. Now all we had to do was get the pants under the gator, which I was guessing had been a whole lot easier when he was floating on water.
“I can’t be the only one wondering how we’re going to get the pants under the gator, right?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Gertie said. “I think the easiest way would be if you lift his tail until his back legs are off the ground, then I’ll shove the pants under and Ida Belle can pull them through to the other side.”
The entire mess sounded more and more ridiculous the longer we plodded along, but five minutes later, the gator was munching on fish casserole, and I was straining to get half of him high enough for the pants squad to get the sling in place.
It probably only took them a couple seconds, but it felt like I’d been holding him up forever before I finally plopped him back down on the lawn.
Godzilla was so busy with the nasty casserole he hadn’t even looked back to see why his hind end was dangling in midair.
I rubbed my shoulders and arms and shook my head. “Guys, I don’t think we can lift him into the pirogue. It was all I could do to get the tail up. There’s a lot more gator to lift.”
Ida Belle studied the gator and the pirogue. “Maybe we could turn the pirogue on its side and drag the gator in partway, then flip it over.”
“And if he decided he doesn’t like flipping and he comes jumping out and chasing people up trees again?” I asked.
“Then we go inside and call Carter and he sends the people who will put him back into the bayou where he belongs,” Ida Belle said. “Sans pants, of course.” She looked over at Gertie. “And no arguments from you.”
“Fine,” Gertie said. “If we can’t make it work, then I’ll turn him over to Carter.”
I didn’t think for a moment Gertie would let go of it that easily, but since the gator was wrapped up in a sling, I figured that gave me enough of a head start to get out if things went south and Ida Belle started shooting. I hadn’t missed the fact that she’d stuck Gertie’s .45 in her pocket.
I directed Ida Belle to grab the other end of the pirogue and we turned it on its side and moved it next to the alligator.
Then Ida Belle got on the back side of the pirogue, and I handed her one end of the pants to pull and lift with.
Gertie and I got on the other side and each grabbed a wad of polyester.
I started the countdown. “On three. One. Two. Three!”
The gator weighed a bit less that I’d expected.
Apparently, they carry a lot of weight in their tail, so when we heaved, he moved more than anticipated.
We lifted him clean off the ground and into the side of the pirogue so hard and fast that he banged into the bottom and flipped the whole thing over.
Ida Belle managed to leap out of the way just as the pirogue came crashing down on the ground, and she hopped back up, hand at her waist as we all stared at the alligator.
He tossed his head from side to side, banging it on the pirogue, then wiggled around until he was positioned comfortably down the center, then closed his eyes.
“He’s going to sleep,” I said. “I don’t believe it. It’s almost like he knows we’re trying to help him.”
“Don’t you get carried away on that crap,” Ida Belle said. “The last thing I need is two of you ascribing human emotions to a prehistoric reptile. More likely, his digestive system is wondering what the heck he’s done to it and has put him down for the count until it figures something out.”
“Either way,” I said, “let’s get this covered with the tarp, slide it up on the trailer, and get out of here before one of the neighbors calls Carter and tattles.”
“Too late.” Carter’s voice sounded on the porch behind us.