Gator Bait

               After four adventure-filled days on the road we arrived at the small town of Fargo, Georgia. We took our strike team of engines to the base camp and checked in. We found out we would be pulling night shift. Night shift. In the Okefenokee Swamp. Understand; we are all hardy Montana boys used to the woods, bugs, bears, etc. But this is a swamp. Swamps are, by nature, very, very scary. And spooky. Well, we thought, at least we will be in our engines patrolling the fire, close to friends and safety.

                We head over to our briefing and are immediately met by a fellow named Everett. But we are to call him Earl. We didn’t get it either. Now, Earl was a very nice guy. He had a very weak chin and maybe ten teeth left. He had sores on his arms that the omnipresent gnats were always bothering at. He spoke with what you might euphemistically call a southern drawl. He was, and I’m sure still is, a walking cliché for all things southern.

Everett/Earl says, “Okay, I’ma send summa you boys out patrollin the swamp roads lookin fer far (fire?). I’ma need one engine to head down at t’boardwalk to run a pump.”  After we interpreted his words we realized that one of the two most experienced engine bosses would have to do this solo job. Guess who’s one of the two most experienced engine bosses in this strike team? Moi. Guess who can’t rochambeau for shit? Moi. This job would involve keeping a water pump running through the night. This pump was attached to a sprinkler system that was plumbed to protect the Stephen F. Foster State Park and the boardwalk that extends into the woods that surround the buildings. Stephen F. Foster State Park is in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp. The pump sucks water out of the swamp and sprays it on the buildings and boardwalk. The pump, we will later discover, sits at water level on a small boat ramp. In the water there are gators. Gators will eat you.



Hungry fella?



 Everett/Earl looks at me and says, “Now, I don’t want yew out on that boardwalk in the dark. Been a big ol’ gator walkin ‘round on that thing at night. Gator can run thirty-five mile an hour and that’s a whole lot faster’n you. Y’hear?”

Me: “So we’re going to be out in the dark by ourselves in the swamp?”

Earl: “Yep. Y’all head out there and I’ll meet ya after a while.”

Me: “Holy Shit.”

Let's throw that guy in.

          We say our goodbyes and wonder if we will have time to tell our relatives we love them before gators eat us. When we get to the park, we see that the pump sits on a pond about 1/3 the size of a football field. With great trepidation we near the pond and start counting gators. I think we saw three or four right away. The fire is very quiet at this time, and there is still some daylight so we decide to check out the boardwalk. We grab Pulaski’s, not to fight fire, but to irritate gators while they eat us. The boardwalk leaves the pond at a right angle through a very spooky forest of live oak and cypress trees. In this swampy forest live snakes, bugs, and alligators who all have joined together to ravage us. We go about ten feet, look at one another, and as manfully as possible, we fall back to the safety of our engine. Everett/Earl eventually shows up and it is decided that the fire will not approach us tonight. Therefore, the pump need not be run. Therefore, we may survive the night.

                Once it is fully dark the swamp explodes with sound. Bugs, frogs, gators, and skunk apes meld their voices into a cacophony we couldn’t imagine. Literally, we had to shout to be heard.



The Skunk Ape

 The good news is, with all that sound we won’t hear things sneaking up on us in the night. Since we have little to do I arrange it so two guys can sleep while the third patrols the area. I take the first shift. As I’m walking along my headlamp is reflected by dozens of pairs of tiny eyes on the roadway near the pond. Turns out they belong to cute little toads and frogs. These I can deal with. As I bend to pick one of the croaking cuties up I am struck by the realization that these are probably deadly poisonous. Awesome. After about fifteen minutes of racking my brain for the characteristics of poisonous amphibians, I realize that I don’t know shit about poisonous amphibians.

               

I gently pick one up with my tool and look it over. It looks just like the toads I used to play with growing up in Iowa. As I’m holding this little guy a thought occurs to me: I wonder if gators like to eat frogs? Now, we had been told over and over not to feed the gators. They get spoiled and so forth. But this is natural, right? Gators prey on frogs. It’s not like a Moon Pie or something. With a quick glance I make sure no one is watching and I toss the frog into the pond. He lands right in front of a big gator and proceeds to swim right up to the side of its mouth. At which point the gator consumes natures little treat. Of course I sprint to the engine and roust the boys to show them.

We may or may not have spent the rest of the night looking for frogs.