A Justified Serving
The female alligator was surprised by the presence of a human at night. Most bipedal folks avoided the Florida swamps in the dark. This hair-and-color-deprived guy with a khaki pair of shorts and shirt became the exception. Motionless as if under the control of an intoxicant, the ill-omened individual using headphones just sat on the ground.
Logistics concerned the crocodilian animal. That man chose a place near her nest. If he had rested in a different location, she would have disregarded him. Determined to communicate ire over the mistake, the female opened her jaws, exhibiting eighty ashen teeth, and hissed. The noise signified it was time for the intruder to retreat.
Unfamiliar with newscasts, the predator had no idea that the man near it murdered his girlfriend. Nor did it know that earlier in the couple’s relationship, he called his lover a pear. Arguments between them over time came in bushels, and they soured any sweet fruit comparison. None of this information would have increased or decreased the carnivore’s interest. Ancient instincts dating back 37 million years ago saw the being as a threat and nothing else.
Roused by motions in the grass, the outlaw saw the beast racing over at 35 mph. 4.2-million-year-old instincts to flee could not comply due to the influence of antidepressants. Also, a need to destroy the guilt over strangling his former lover made the criminal almost welcome his scaly executioner.
Securing the man’s leg, the huntress dragged her fleshy victim. The louder that living dinner screamed, the faster the diner ran for the swamp. Flailing the feast in the bloody water yielded an efficacious outcome. Bones got broken. Twirling about drowned what little life the individual had left.
Resulting from a regular diet of snakes, turtles, fish, small birds, et cetera, the ravenous gator found eating this strange adult unpleasant. Large quantities of sodium in the body made the experience distasteful.
Chewing such matter seemed unpleasant to the animal but seeing it would have been enjoyably revengeful for many people. Never in the annals of creation had any person called an alligator a hero. Nonetheless, this particular cold-blooded creature earned that title. It executed the justice others could not.
Discarded bones, clothes, and a three-day military issue backpack would later reveal the defeat of a warring existence.
Bob McNeil, writer, editor, cartoonist, and spoken word artist, is the author of Verses of Realness (https://tinylink.net/muF6C). Hal Sirowitz, a former Queens, NY Poet Laureate, called the book “a fantastic trip through the mind of a poet who doesn’t flinch at the truth.” Among Bob’s recent accomplishments, he found working on Lyrics of Mature Hearts to be a humbling experience because of the anthology’s talented contributors. Copies of that collection are available here: https://amzn.to/3bU8Loi.