There is something kind of primal about owning a dog. Yes, I could get all philosophical, but I mean this in a very specific way. There are bones in my living room. They are cow, not mammoth, and they have been specially treated and processed for consumption by canine, but nonetheless, they are bones. Cross sections of bovine femur have been methodically reduced to shards by my domesticated ancestor of the majestic wolf. Actually, my Siberian husky, Nikita, does closely resemble a wolf. Mostly white with gray markings and one blue eye, she is very striking. Until you see her run across the hardwood in hot pursuit of one morsel of chow. Cartoonishly, all four paws lose traction and she runs in place until she tumbles on her furry tail and slides across the floor. The wolf illusion is short lived. She tries to regain her dignity by unleashing a piercing howl that echoes through the house, but she can tell by our uncontrolled laughter that we are not fooled.
Somewhere in Alabama was a girl who saw it, though. I was in Alabama legitimately—passing through on the way to Florida with my husband as we had done many times before. Every such trip we would stop about half way through to get gas and let the husky stretch her legs. Our favorite destination for these respites was a dandy place where you could buy gas, snacks, trucker drugs, and feed a few alligators at Tom Mann’s Fish World. Easily mistaken for a glorified gas station with a tackle shop off to the side, that is until you wandered around back. There waited the discovery of a swampy lagoon which was bordered around the leading edge by a wooden deck and machines that dispensed handfuls of kibble for a quarter. Looking out amongst the lily pads you could see the bumpy, leathery heads of the gators with their slitted pupils blinking lazily. No fence around this habitat. Oh, no.
You could walk right up and slap one of those cold-blooded suckers on its snout if your extra chromosome dictated such an action. What kept the alligators from wandering out into the traffic of Hwy 139 not twenty yards away? Constant handfuls of kibble? I tried not to think about it. Much like I tried to ignore the toddlers who wobbled around the banks of the lagoon, lest I unwittingly became a witness to something tragic. Now, don’t get me wrong, these were not huge “sewers of New York” sized reptiles. Most were about six feet long. But they weren’t babies. They could hurt you or your dog if either wandered too close. So, we always made sure that Nikita was kept on a short leash. All danger aside, you couldn’t ask for a more fascinating place to stop for gas and a stretch.
