SWAMPIE AND THE ALLIGATOR

SWAMPIE AND THE ALLIGATOR

This is for Doug, he requested it.

After high school and a couple of years of college I went to work for the Louisiana Dept. of Highways in the engineering dept.  I spent a couple of years on a survey party on the dumb end of a brush hook, chopping right of way.  I finally figured out the guy who ran the surveying instrument had the easiest job so I set out and learned how to run it.   

I was doing fine until some guy in South La. got bit by a cottonmouth moccasin and had to take some time off to recover, the loafer.  They sent me down there to take his place.  They were running surveys for drainage easements off of I-10.  That's survey talk for wading through swamps and mosquitoes.  Now the mosquitoes are one thing Troy Landry and the boys on Swamp People don't tell you about.  They are huge and way too numerous.  If they aren't huge there are 100 times more of them.  I was coming out of Saline Swamp after hunting one October day and I overheard 2 of them talking to each other.  One asked the other "do we want to eat him here or take him back in the swamp?" The other one answered "Let's eat him here, if we take him back there the bigguns will take him away from us."  And that's not mentioning the snakes.  The cottonmouths were as thick as the mosquitoes.  Those guys waded through them like they weren't there.  Did I mention I don't like snakes.

We were in that swamp with hip boots, the tripod for the instrument had extensions on the legs to sink into the mud.  It was also in August, about 105 degrees with 775% humidity.  I was miserable, the longest 2 weeks of my life up to that point.  Anyway, I was up to my thighs in muddy water looking through that transit at a plumb bob nobody knew where the end was and I saw a log floating toward the instrument.  I couldn't let that dang log bump the tripod, we'd have to start over on the line we were working.  I had a range pole with me, they have a sharp point on one end.  Now I need to explain something else.  At that time we didn't have many alligators in North La.   I personally had never seen one in the wild.  I poked that log with that pole and both ends exploded.  That gator looked to be about 30 feet long and I made him mad.  Mister, I quit the country, I gave him that transit and said good riddance.  

One of the guys on the survey crew with a Troy Landry accent said later "Man, Jesus thought he was cool walking on water, did you see Johnny running across it.  He didn't even get his feet wet."

Swamprat