DeadRooster.com

Photo credit: Pandiyan

When I was ten-years-old it was possible to wander into K-Mart, do a little shopping, and then walk out the front door carrying a brown paper sack containing a live alligator.

I’m not referring to an alligator-style lizard, or some kind of toy; but an actual, living, breathing baby alligator that would eventually grow to roughly the same dimensions as a small nuclear submarine and be capable of swallowing live chickens the size of basketballs.

Now days, K-Mart doesn’t even sell live pets, but back then they had a pretty exotic pet department: African frogs, hairy tarantulas, boa constrictors—even scorpions!—and they must’ve had at least fifty gator hatchlings climbing all over each other. To this day I remember what a bargain they were: only $1.50 each! The only thing that kept me from buying one right then and there was the sign on the aquarium that read “Must be 18 to purchase.”

I recall running home and suggesting to my mom that we hurry back and buy one before they were all gone, but, for some reason, she didn’t share my enthusiasm and refused. I was crushed. There went my dreams of feeding it until it was big enough for me to ride to school where I’d have it rip the arms off of bullies like Carl Klugman who, on one occasion, stuck two extremely sexually-active hamsters down my pants.

Although I never got to have a pet gator, plenty of other kids did. After I grew up and gained enough sanity to realize an alligator may not be the greatest pet choice, I often wondered what people did when their gator, which can grow up to 18-feet long, became a real problem. For instance, let’s say it’s Thanksgiving and the turkey is coming out of the oven—it smells terrific!—but then your pet alligator, Uncle Albert, attracted by the scent, waddles into the kitchen and roars. What would you do?

My guess is that Uncle Albert is going to have a very nice meal while you, and all your relatives, are forced to sit around the dining table and listen to your rumbling stomachs.

I should be thankful that my mom wouldn’t let me get one; I’d probably still have it—and, I just learned that alligators can live up to 70 years in captivity!

Here are some interesting facts about alligators:

• Adults can survive more than two years without eating.
• An average alligator lives to about 40-years-old, but one held in captivity lived to be over 100.
• They can stay submerged under water for up to 2 hours (in very cold water they can stay under for as much as 8 hours!)
• An alligator can only exert itself for 30 minutes before it becomes completely exhausted and will need several hours to recover.
• Their eggs respond to temperature. If they are kept at a temperature in the low 80’s (degrees) they will all develop into females; if the eggs are kept in the low 90’s, they will all develop into males; in-between temperatures produce a mixture of males and females.

Some people, such as those living in Florida and Louisiana, choose to live right in the thick of Gator Country where alligators have been known to wander the streets and periodically visit grocery stores. During my recent trip to Orlando, I was watching for gators, but the only one I saw was the animatronics version I saw on Disney’s Jungle Cruse ride. He appeared menacing and snapped his jaw.

Photo credit: gwen

For those of you planning to pull pranks on the ice cream truck driver this summer, here’s a tip: If one of your pranks involves climbing a tree with a well-crafted dummy and hurling it in front of the approaching ice cream truck, it is usually a mistake to set it on fire first.

When I was a kid, my neighborhood had a high turnover rate for ice cream truck drivers. The reason, of course, was that my cousin Steve and I, who lived just one street apart back then, were constantly planning crueler and crueler pranks to play on them. Each new ice cream man quickly learned that when he got close to Steve’s house, he needed to step on the accelerator and speed by as fast as possible thus shortening his time in the “Hot Zone.”

Like most twelve-year-old-boys, we started out with the classic water balloons and dirt clods, and then advanced to more elaborate, sophisticated pranks such as those requiring various types of illegal fireworks.

But, then we got the dummy idea.

There are two proper methods to throwing a dummy out of a tree and into the path of a moving ice cream truck: a.) Face-up-horizontal as if some knucklehead accidentally fell out of the tree to die a horrible screaming death beneath the truck, or b.) Face-down-horizontal as if someone purposely catapulted out of the tree to commit an ice cream truck related fantasy suicide.

We went with “suicide.”

But, first, we had to build the perfect dummy. We started off with old clothes, which we stuffed with other old clothes; then we used one of those white, Styrofoam wig-stands for the head and used sticky double-back tape to attach a Freddy-from-Scooby-Doo Halloween mask for the face. Gloves and shoes completed the form.

One of us, I think it was Steve, thought it would greatly enhance the effect if we saturated Freddy’s upper torso and head with Raging Rocket High-Octane Barbeque Starter Fluid then light it off just before we tossed the dummy out of the tree.

It’s funny how it never occurred to us that this was a bad idea until the exact moment the dummy erupted into flames.

We were sitting in the lower branches of the tree which hung about four-feet above where the roof of the ice cream truck would eventually pass. As the ice cream truck approached, Steve let go of the flaming upper torso leaving me holding the knees pressed against a limb and causing the dummy to swing down to stare directly at the ice cream truck driver.

The plan was for both of us to let go of the dummy at the same time so it would fall just in front of the truck, but I momentarily froze in the wake of the tall flames—hesitating just long enough for the truck to get underneath before I snapped-out-of-it and dropped my half.

I can only imagine what this looked like to the ice cream truck driver: He’s slowly driving along, minding his own business blasting Pop-Goes-the-Weasel from his loud speaker, when the flaming upper torso of a body swings out of a tree upside-down; the friendly smile of Freddy quickly melting and distorting into a rictus grin shouting fire like a blowtorch.

As it turned out, the dummy landed square on top of the ice cream truck, lying on its back with its arms spread out, blazing away. We watched as the truck made its way down the street, turned the corner, and continued on its regular route to deliver treats. The flaming body, now appearing as if the driver placed it up there on purpose, sent a confusing message to those wanting ice cream. I doubt he sold many ice cream bars that day.

We never found out if the burning dummy did any damage to the truck, nor did we ever play another prank on that guy. In fact, if we heard Pop-Goes-the-Weasel, we just went in the house.

When I was a kid the principal of my school would periodically gather us all up and show us anti-drug films. I remember one in particular where a guy took a couple of puffs off a “marijuana cigarette” then looked at his reflection in a mirror and watched his face melt. That was pretty terrifying stuff for an eight year old.

When I see these old 1960’s drug propaganda films today I usually think they’re pretty hilarious. Some of them, like the following one, make me wonder if I really missed out on something when I decided not to use LSD:

Looks like all the cool kids were “users.”

I didn’t use drugs when I was a teenager, but I was still pretty cool. I had a ‘67 Camaro, a hot blond girlfriend, and played lead guitar in a rock band. I looked like, and even kind of acted like a drug user, but in reality, about the worst thing I ever did was skip school to go surfing–which, admittedly, I did WAY too much.

Good times.