Sunshineland

You know, I saw a man get eaten by an alligator once. It was in Florida. My family went on vacation to Orlando. We played Stupid Canadian Tourists. My parents were really good at that.

That's about all I remember from that trip. We almost never went anywhere. My parents aren't great travellers. Or at least my father's not. He keeps buying neat new expensive power tools he'll never use that take up space in the garage. My mother never complains. I wonder why.

It was really hot in Florida. It's amazing, people who go on holiday to Florida in July. My father bragged about how cheap it was.

I was only twelve. It was one of the central character-building moments of my life. This revoltingly coarse guy, a stinking cigar stuck in his mouth and a ridiculous, larger-than-life American accent, was showing the tourists his alligator pens. We all paid two American dollars to get a tour of his farm. We were with a busload of Japanese tourists. It was just like in movies, they all had cameras and took billions of pictures. Most of the kids they towed along spoke some English and translated.

I remember a really cute girl who looked at me and smiled, asked me where I was from. She didn't know where Canada was. It was that time in my life, so it was a pretty big thing, this cute girl talking to me. I wonder what she ended up doing. She probably lives in Banff or Toronto or Vancouver or something. That would be ironic. I saw someone who looked a lot like her at school a few years later, but she didn't smile at me.

The guy seemed drunk, or maybe he was normally like that. He got up on the fence and started poking at a really big alligator. He, the alligator that is, snarled and snapped viciously. He had marks all over him where he'd been poked before, or maybe it was from fights with other alligators. It doesn't really matter now, but I thought how unfair it was for him to be locked up like that.

Anyway, the guy started to laugh when the alligator writhed. One of the Japanese tourists screamed and nearly fainted when it opened its mouth and tried to get at the farmer. It had billions of teeth. It was incredible. But the guy just laughed and poked it even harder.

After what happened I felt guilty for a while. I was sorry for the alligator, you know. I hoped-- just for a moment, not very long, because the thought of it terrifies me and I'd never wish it on anyone-- that the Alligator would finally get the old bugger, and teach the farmer a lesson in how to treat animals.

Well, right then, the alligator grabbed the stick the guy was holding and pulled on it. The man wobbled for a bit and then got this really serious expression. I remember it, just as he was falling over the side of the fence, then how he looked so terrified at the last moment. I didn't realize what was happening. I didn't really think anyone would die. I thought it was just a big movie. Everything in the U.S. is like a movie. It seemed unreal. I was sure a T.V. crew would appear and the guy would climb back up the fence.

Well, the tourists all crowded up to the pen. Most of them started screaming all at once. My mother grabbed my sister and brother and pulled them back, but I got away and ran through the crowd to see what was happening. There was the guy, just like I wished a moment before, and he was hitting the alligator on the nose. It took me a while to notice that one of his legs was inside the alligator's mouth. The farmer was screaming. Boy, could he scream.

He thrashed around for a long time, and some of the tourists ran to get help. Eventually the alligator ripped off his leg and swallowed it in big gulps, and some of the other alligators came over to get a piece of the farmer. I guess they recognized him, because they went at him in a nasty way. All those green scaly bodies twisting around, ripping some part off the man. I'd just read Animal Farm, and I thought that must have been what it was like.

But then the alligators started biting each other, so I lost my sympathy for them. If they were that stupid then maybe they deserved it.

My mother was crying when she found me. My father was really scared. I've never seen him so white. He didn't say anything to us at all until after the police came by.

In Florida, the police cars are black and white, not blue and white, and the police sound like they're from bad American movies. That really struck me.

I saw the cute Japanese girl when her parents were telling the story to the police. She didn't seem upset at all. It was as if we were both watching T.V., but only we knew it. She glanced over, and I waved. She waved back and smiled again.

The police took everyone's story, and then one of them pulled out a rifle. As everyone watched he walked over to the alligator pen and aimed very carefully. He shot the big alligator first, a few times, and it twitched for a while after he killed it.

What a waste.

Such a shame to kill it. It wasn't really fair, I remember thinking.