It was a cool, early spring night in northern Florida; the sky was blanketed with eerie grey clouds that shrouded the stars and seemed to devour the thin sliver of waning moon. It was a Saturday night—one of the first ones I didn’t have plans for in a long time, which was rare for a sixteen year old girl—and I just wanted to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet. I had decided to go out for a breath of fresh air and I was standing on the front step of my miniature-sized guest house. My parents had graciously agreed to let me move into it when I got a job so I could have a little freedom—plus they could collect some rent. It was situated in the back yard of my family’s larger ranch-style home, attached on the side by an open breezeway that we used for outdoor storage. The in-ground swimming pool lay only a few feet in front of me.
The vinyl liner had come loose again in the shallow end, and water had filtered in between it and the exposed concrete. Something about it just irked me—it was like skin peeling off after a nasty sunburn… it just didn’t seem natural. I wondered how many spiders it housed.
It wasn’t warm enough to start swimming yet, and through the winter we didn’t bother trying to maintain the pool. There were too many leaves to scoop and nobody was using it anyway. Now the water was green and murky, and I half expected to see some roaring swamp beast rise out of it at any moment. It even had a raw, sulfuric stench to it, like after a hot summer rain.
Thick fog crept slowly across the surface of the water like a scene out of a low-rate horror film. I felt this overwhelming sense of dread as I stared at the image before me. I’d had nightmares about this pool before, and it usually looked exactly like this—just plain creepy. I stood there pondering the many terrifying things that could be lurking beneath the surface of the algae-infested water: toads, most likely; a snake, maybe; dead bugs and spiders, definitely.
I decided to do something incredibly stupid and check the trap on the side of the deep end to see what kinds of gifts it had in store for me. It was usually one of my dog’s tennis balls or a mass of downed helicopter seeds—the ones that spin like propellers when they fall from the trees. I lifted the square plastic lid and peered into the hole; the small yellow light on the corner of my porch shone just enough to mark the outlines of a toad bobbing in the water. I picked up the little net that hung on the nearby wall and gave it a dunk into the water to scoop out the toad. It was dead. I dumped it onto the concrete, scoffed in disgust, and nudged it into the grass with the tip of my shoe.
A sudden splish in the water drew my gaze sharply back to the pool.
What was that?
It couldn’t be a fish. There’s no way. Fish don’t just randomly show up in swimming pools, right? It had to be something bigger—a snake? It wouldn’t be the first time. We lived within half a mile of Doctor’s Lake, so of course there was some sort of monthly ritual of a snake showing up in the yard, moon-bathing in the driveway, or venturing into the pool. They were annoying, but unfortunately if one of the cats didn’t get rid of them, it was left to us humans.
I stepped closer to the edge of the water, though my mind screamed at me to stay away. I felt compelled to find out what was splashing about in my pool while it looked like Swamp Thing’s nest. This would have been the moment in a scary movie when I’d be shouting at the television, “No! Run the other way, dumbass!”
Cautiously, I crouched down and squinted, waving a hand through the fog in an attempt to clear it up enough so I could see deeper into the water. I could see movement: a dark shadow barely shifting beneath the greenish murk. It had to be a mass of leaves on the bottom of the pool. Or maybe just shadows. There was a subtle breeze which caused the fog to creep along in its slow journey over the water’s surface and off into the depths of my yard. Whatever the dark shadowy thing was, it was way too big to be a snake.
But leaves and shadows don’t splash in the water like that…
To my sheer horror, the entire dark mass twisted suddenly and darted upward from the six-foot depths. I let out a surprised yelp and stumbled back, fought my way over the short distance to my doorstep without looking away from the water. It broke the surface and I wanted to scream at what I saw, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out. The intruder circled around the deeper end of the pool once, then splashed back into the water and disappeared beneath the thick screen of algae and fog.
My pool wasn’t just a death bed for leaves, twigs and insects; it wasn’t just a nesting place for spiders and too-curious toads; it wasn’t even infested with water moccasins like I suspected. It was much worse than that.
“Hoooooly shit! There’s a freaking alligator in my pool!” I shouted, practically squealed, as I finally managed to find my voice again. I was wedged between panic and awe. One part of me thought this was the coolest thing I could imagine; the other feared for my dogs and cats. If there’s an alligator in my pool, it clearly found a way into my yard, didn’t it? We couldn’t have alligators roaming about in our backyard all willy-nilly!
I began to pull myself together and stood up with my back pressed firmly against the guest house door, then took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. I needed to do something…but what? I began running through a mental checklist, deciding I should call someone. Mom was at work; Dad was on sea duty, probably floating around in the Mediterranean somewhere; my sister was staying the night with one of her friends; my boyfriend was an idiot and he’d probably do something stupid like jump in the water and end up losing an arm or leg; it was probably too late at night to call animal control, but I had to try.
I turned the doorknob behind me and all but fell backward into the guest house, then slammed the door shut. Who knows? The gator might have escaped the pool and tried to follow me inside. Having an alligator in my living room would be so much worse than having one in my swimming pool!
I grabbed my phone and dialed 4-1-1 so I didn’t have to hunt down the number for animal control through the phone book—did they still make those? When I was finally connected to the animal control office, the woman that answered had a slow southern drawl and didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and I was too busy waiting to explain the situation to listen to anything she said.
“Thank you for callin’ Clay County Anim—” I interrupted her before she could finish. She could have been a recorded message, for all I knew, but I also didn’t care at the moment.
“There’s a freaking alligator in my swimming pool and nobody is home and I don’t know how it got there and what if it ate my cats? I mean I have dogs too, but what if it ate my cats? I can’t get it out because I don’t think I have a net big enough, but my dad might because he likes to fish so can you send someone?” The whole request came out in one extremely fast, giant sentence—or was it a question? I nearly panicked all over again while I was trying to explain. The lady on the phone didn’t seem to know either, so she just sighed.
“Allllright honey, jus’ tell me yer address an’ I’ll send one of th’ boys out to ya.”
I relayed my address as soon as I could remember it, and then hung up the phone. What was I supposed to do now? Sit around and wait for them to show up like a normal person? Pah!
I should do something—keep it distracted, maybe. I went to dig through my closet and found some old, muddy boots I used to wear when we would take the quads out to Keystone. Surely wearing boots would be safer than flip-flops. I marched outside, feeling much more invincible since I had a thin layer of rubber covering my toes, and made sure the dogs were locked in the house before I swung the back gate open. I wouldn’t likely hear if the animal control guy decided to do a dingbat thing like ring the doorbell, so this way he could let himself in.
I stood near the shallow end of the pool, waved my arms in front of the motion-sensitive light on the corner of the breezeway so it would switch on, and peered into the water through the fog.
Where is it now?
It must have still been at the other end of the pool, hiding within its greenish-brown depths. I felt like I should do something. If I could get it into the shallow end, it would be easier for them to catch, right?
Meat! Alligators love meat! I could bait it, and then they could catch it! But what would I bait it with? A fishing pole, maybe. That made sense.
I ran into the main house and hunted down one of my dad’s fishing poles, then scavenged the refrigerator for some gator bait. All we had was a selection of lunch meat and half a package of hot dogs, so I grabbed all of it. While I was still in the kitchen, I quickly wrapped slices of turkey and honey ham around whole hot dogs, shoved a few toothpicks through them so they would all stick together like one big hunk of meat, and rigged them onto the three-pronged fishing hook. This could work!
Armed for my battle with the gator, I headed back outside just in time to meet up with the two guys from animal control. They eyed me with my lunchmeat-hot-dog-baited fishing pole and my rubber mudding boots, while I eyed them and their spiffy tan jumpsuits with nametags identifying them as Dave and Brian, their giant roll of duct tape, and Ketch-All pole. After a moment of awkward silence, one of them burst into laughter. Like they’d never seen anyone fishing for alligators in a swimming pool before!
“Best let me handle this one,” the man labeled Dave suggested while Brian continued to chuckle.
Dave gave the pool a quick once-over, and then hopped right into the shallow end with a sploosh. It took them all of five minutes to hook the gator, pull him out, and tape him up. He wasn’t big, thankfully—only about four feet long, so he was still young. Obviously there was a breach in our fence somewhere that would have to be found and blocked off.
I thanked Dave and Brian while I followed them through the gate and to the front, Brian carrying the gator tucked under his arm like a purse, and Dave squishing through the grass with a half-soaked jumpsuit and boots full of water. I was almost sad to see them go. They hopped in their pickup, keeping the little gator in the cab with them, and drove away while I stood there waving farewell with hot dogs dangling from my fishing pole.
The vinyl liner had come loose again in the shallow end, and water had filtered in between it and the exposed concrete. Something about it just irked me—it was like skin peeling off after a nasty sunburn… it just didn’t seem natural. I wondered how many spiders it housed.
It wasn’t warm enough to start swimming yet, and through the winter we didn’t bother trying to maintain the pool. There were too many leaves to scoop and nobody was using it anyway. Now the water was green and murky, and I half expected to see some roaring swamp beast rise out of it at any moment. It even had a raw, sulfuric stench to it, like after a hot summer rain.
Thick fog crept slowly across the surface of the water like a scene out of a low-rate horror film. I felt this overwhelming sense of dread as I stared at the image before me. I’d had nightmares about this pool before, and it usually looked exactly like this—just plain creepy. I stood there pondering the many terrifying things that could be lurking beneath the surface of the algae-infested water: toads, most likely; a snake, maybe; dead bugs and spiders, definitely.
I decided to do something incredibly stupid and check the trap on the side of the deep end to see what kinds of gifts it had in store for me. It was usually one of my dog’s tennis balls or a mass of downed helicopter seeds—the ones that spin like propellers when they fall from the trees. I lifted the square plastic lid and peered into the hole; the small yellow light on the corner of my porch shone just enough to mark the outlines of a toad bobbing in the water. I picked up the little net that hung on the nearby wall and gave it a dunk into the water to scoop out the toad. It was dead. I dumped it onto the concrete, scoffed in disgust, and nudged it into the grass with the tip of my shoe.
A sudden splish in the water drew my gaze sharply back to the pool.
What was that?
It couldn’t be a fish. There’s no way. Fish don’t just randomly show up in swimming pools, right? It had to be something bigger—a snake? It wouldn’t be the first time. We lived within half a mile of Doctor’s Lake, so of course there was some sort of monthly ritual of a snake showing up in the yard, moon-bathing in the driveway, or venturing into the pool. They were annoying, but unfortunately if one of the cats didn’t get rid of them, it was left to us humans.
I stepped closer to the edge of the water, though my mind screamed at me to stay away. I felt compelled to find out what was splashing about in my pool while it looked like Swamp Thing’s nest. This would have been the moment in a scary movie when I’d be shouting at the television, “No! Run the other way, dumbass!”
Cautiously, I crouched down and squinted, waving a hand through the fog in an attempt to clear it up enough so I could see deeper into the water. I could see movement: a dark shadow barely shifting beneath the greenish murk. It had to be a mass of leaves on the bottom of the pool. Or maybe just shadows. There was a subtle breeze which caused the fog to creep along in its slow journey over the water’s surface and off into the depths of my yard. Whatever the dark shadowy thing was, it was way too big to be a snake.
But leaves and shadows don’t splash in the water like that…
To my sheer horror, the entire dark mass twisted suddenly and darted upward from the six-foot depths. I let out a surprised yelp and stumbled back, fought my way over the short distance to my doorstep without looking away from the water. It broke the surface and I wanted to scream at what I saw, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out. The intruder circled around the deeper end of the pool once, then splashed back into the water and disappeared beneath the thick screen of algae and fog.
My pool wasn’t just a death bed for leaves, twigs and insects; it wasn’t just a nesting place for spiders and too-curious toads; it wasn’t even infested with water moccasins like I suspected. It was much worse than that.
“Hoooooly shit! There’s a freaking alligator in my pool!” I shouted, practically squealed, as I finally managed to find my voice again. I was wedged between panic and awe. One part of me thought this was the coolest thing I could imagine; the other feared for my dogs and cats. If there’s an alligator in my pool, it clearly found a way into my yard, didn’t it? We couldn’t have alligators roaming about in our backyard all willy-nilly!
I began to pull myself together and stood up with my back pressed firmly against the guest house door, then took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. I needed to do something…but what? I began running through a mental checklist, deciding I should call someone. Mom was at work; Dad was on sea duty, probably floating around in the Mediterranean somewhere; my sister was staying the night with one of her friends; my boyfriend was an idiot and he’d probably do something stupid like jump in the water and end up losing an arm or leg; it was probably too late at night to call animal control, but I had to try.
I turned the doorknob behind me and all but fell backward into the guest house, then slammed the door shut. Who knows? The gator might have escaped the pool and tried to follow me inside. Having an alligator in my living room would be so much worse than having one in my swimming pool!
I grabbed my phone and dialed 4-1-1 so I didn’t have to hunt down the number for animal control through the phone book—did they still make those? When I was finally connected to the animal control office, the woman that answered had a slow southern drawl and didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and I was too busy waiting to explain the situation to listen to anything she said.
“Thank you for callin’ Clay County Anim—” I interrupted her before she could finish. She could have been a recorded message, for all I knew, but I also didn’t care at the moment.
“There’s a freaking alligator in my swimming pool and nobody is home and I don’t know how it got there and what if it ate my cats? I mean I have dogs too, but what if it ate my cats? I can’t get it out because I don’t think I have a net big enough, but my dad might because he likes to fish so can you send someone?” The whole request came out in one extremely fast, giant sentence—or was it a question? I nearly panicked all over again while I was trying to explain. The lady on the phone didn’t seem to know either, so she just sighed.
“Allllright honey, jus’ tell me yer address an’ I’ll send one of th’ boys out to ya.”
I relayed my address as soon as I could remember it, and then hung up the phone. What was I supposed to do now? Sit around and wait for them to show up like a normal person? Pah!
I should do something—keep it distracted, maybe. I went to dig through my closet and found some old, muddy boots I used to wear when we would take the quads out to Keystone. Surely wearing boots would be safer than flip-flops. I marched outside, feeling much more invincible since I had a thin layer of rubber covering my toes, and made sure the dogs were locked in the house before I swung the back gate open. I wouldn’t likely hear if the animal control guy decided to do a dingbat thing like ring the doorbell, so this way he could let himself in.
I stood near the shallow end of the pool, waved my arms in front of the motion-sensitive light on the corner of the breezeway so it would switch on, and peered into the water through the fog.
Where is it now?
It must have still been at the other end of the pool, hiding within its greenish-brown depths. I felt like I should do something. If I could get it into the shallow end, it would be easier for them to catch, right?
Meat! Alligators love meat! I could bait it, and then they could catch it! But what would I bait it with? A fishing pole, maybe. That made sense.
I ran into the main house and hunted down one of my dad’s fishing poles, then scavenged the refrigerator for some gator bait. All we had was a selection of lunch meat and half a package of hot dogs, so I grabbed all of it. While I was still in the kitchen, I quickly wrapped slices of turkey and honey ham around whole hot dogs, shoved a few toothpicks through them so they would all stick together like one big hunk of meat, and rigged them onto the three-pronged fishing hook. This could work!
Armed for my battle with the gator, I headed back outside just in time to meet up with the two guys from animal control. They eyed me with my lunchmeat-hot-dog-baited fishing pole and my rubber mudding boots, while I eyed them and their spiffy tan jumpsuits with nametags identifying them as Dave and Brian, their giant roll of duct tape, and Ketch-All pole. After a moment of awkward silence, one of them burst into laughter. Like they’d never seen anyone fishing for alligators in a swimming pool before!
“Best let me handle this one,” the man labeled Dave suggested while Brian continued to chuckle.
Dave gave the pool a quick once-over, and then hopped right into the shallow end with a sploosh. It took them all of five minutes to hook the gator, pull him out, and tape him up. He wasn’t big, thankfully—only about four feet long, so he was still young. Obviously there was a breach in our fence somewhere that would have to be found and blocked off.
I thanked Dave and Brian while I followed them through the gate and to the front, Brian carrying the gator tucked under his arm like a purse, and Dave squishing through the grass with a half-soaked jumpsuit and boots full of water. I was almost sad to see them go. They hopped in their pickup, keeping the little gator in the cab with them, and drove away while I stood there waving farewell with hot dogs dangling from my fishing pole.
