Critters

In 1957, when I was three, my family (now consisting of my parents, my newborn brother Scott and me) moved to Englewood, Florida, where my dad had a new teaching job and my mother had a nursing job in a nearby town. We lived in a small house on Pineapple Street. It had a huge jungle-like backyard with an abundance of fruit trees, which meant we also had an abundance of banana spiders. These aren't to be confused with the highly poisonous South American version, but you may still count yourself lucky if you have never seen one. My uncle, who was visiting one year, was in the bathroom when he came eyeball-to-eyeball with one on the wall above the toilet. He wouldn't go back in and chose to use the backyard for the rest of his visit. I didn't understand this because as scary as the spiders were, they were nothing compared to the snakes that were out there.

There are 45 species of snakes found in Florida, six of which are venomous and dangerous, and all of which seemed to live in our yard. I know black snakes are generally harmless, but they are still snakes. They slither and hiss and pop their slitty-eyed heads up when you least expect them. My urban-living grandmother once asked me to put the hose up. I kept trying to tell her it wasn't the hose. Finally, in exasperation, she went to do it herself. It wasn't the hose. Frankly, I am surprised that any relatives at all visited us. One of my friend's families had a pet black snake that wandered their house freely and would curl up with warm humans in the night to sleep. I don't think I ever actually slept at a sleepover there. They didn't have any trouble with rodents or unwanted guests though.

Even worse than the black snakes were the rattlesnakes. In the Creek Lane Drive house, we lived near a large stretch of forest. There were a couple of times when the woods caught on fire and all the animals poured out of the burning forest. Most animals just kept on going, but our yard was filled with rattlers that didn't have the social skills to know how unwanted they were. Or maybe they did and just didn't care. If you are a snake you don't have to. We played inside for days.

But the image that shows up in my nightmares decades later is The Big One. We had a Fiat that my parents would fill to overflowing with the family, now numbering five, and take us to the beach just a few minutes away. As we were tooling down the narrow road, a rattler started to cross in front of us, forcing us to stop. Perhaps it thought our tiny car was some delectable bit of prey, because it twisted its head around and looked in the open driver's window. I can't remember what happened immediately after that; all I retain of the incident is a frozen snapshot of that giant snake at eye level that reappears whenever I hear the word snake. The record length for an Eastern Diamondback Rattler is supposedly eight feet. This one was at least that. On our way back from the beach, some men had shot it and it stretched all the way across the road. They had to move it to let us pass. I don't like snakes. And it has nothing to do with Freud.

The wart hogs weren't quite as pervasive, but on Girl Scout camp outs at Myakka State Park, they would snuffle and snort around our tents at night. I always questioned my parents' sanity in allowing me to camp with such obviously dangerous creatures and I pictured in vivid detail their grief when my gored and mangled body was eventually discovered. That this never happened was a bit of a disappointment at the time.

The alligators were unquestionably dangerous. We lived near a creek that connected to a swamp. It not only was thick with water snakes, but alligators, though seldom seen,

were there as well. Occasionally a small dog would disappear and we'd get a fresh lecture from our parents To Stay Away From The Creek. I took the lecture to heart, but my brothers, both dyslexic, got it backwards and were there every chance they could slip away. That was often because during the summer I was left to babysit them. I would start a book and read the entire day, never knowing where they were or what they were doing. One summer afternoon they were playing on the creek bed and Scott (or maybe it was Randy) slipped in and began floundering. Randy (or maybe it was Scott) had the presence of mind to race to a neighbor's house, where luckily the teenage son was home. Somehow Milton Hicks got whichever brother it was safely out and kept the secret until all the boys were adults and the parental statute of limitations had passed.

People often didn't take these stealthy beasts as seriously as they should have. The gators got so used to having marshmallows tossed at them that at golf courses they would race out of the water hazard and gobble up the golf balls. It's always hard to know how to play a ball inside an alligator, so course rules finally made it a three stroke penalty and golfers resumed play with a fresh ball.

Alligators look slow and lumbering out of the water and it's not generally known that for short distances they can outrun a horse. During my childhood they were considered an endangered species, and this protection allowed them to both grow in numbers and lose any fear of humans. Tragically and inevitably a child was snatched from her father's arms in a state park swimming area. That year they were taken off the endangered list and hunting season for alligators resumed.

Is it any wonder I live in North Carolina now?