| John, my airboat guide, said that it’s been too cold for alligators to come out in the daytime for the past four days. He told me three times that an alligator's body has to be at least 78 degrees to digest food like fish, birds and soft-shelled turtles here in the Everglades. I had no idea about their digestion but I saw my share. The airboat launched at 11:30 AM and we shot through the razor-sharp sawtooth grass like the lowest of all flying planes, smooth and breezy. John stopped the airboat in a clearing in the swamp and shut off the engine to talk; too noisy of a machine to operate and talk at the same time. He smelled boozy and talked boozy for 11:45 on a Saturday morning. Looking around the endless swamp, I thought, this boozy guy could kick me out of this boat and into the gator water just like that. A passing egret with a 6-foot wingspan passed overhead and snapped my thinking back to reality. Its shadow flashed across the flat deck |
of the boat.
The sweet-smelling boozy breath started to flow again as he began telling me about the amazing immense swamp we
were parked in the middle of with things moving and jumping in the water and vultures in the air and in the trees.
John told me he used to be a frogger but hurt his back after years of working the swamp at night and hauling bags of
frogs and bending over to get them into a frog chute, a long pipe with a net on one end.
I asked him how he saw the frogs at night and he pulled out a miner’s helmet with a light on it. He said if you see two
small eyes shining back at you it’s a frog; two big eyes and it's an alligator; two very big eyes and it's the 19-foot
monster gator that lurks in the area, and then you start the engine and move from the area fast. My own eyes
opened big just then. Just to prove his point, John said he was bass fishing out here in a 6-foot deep water hole just
last year. As he pulled a jumbo big mouth bass from the hole with rod and reel, the giant gator sprang up from the
depths, and with his gaping jaws wide, snapped the fish, hook, line, and sinker in one bite, splashing back into the
muddy depths of the swamp hole.
John was a third generation frogger before he became an airboat pilot. I could tell that froggers were likely an
independent bunch, working alone at night in the dangerous swamps and probably did a bit of drinking in their
occupational solitude.
John started up the airboat and we skimmed over the surface of the mighty swamp like skaters over smooth ice,
stopping now and again when John spotted an alligator or a mother alligator protecting its young. These mother
alligators are the most dangerous and unpredictable, and will charge the airboat without warning.
The sweet-smelling boozy breath started to flow again as he began telling me about the amazing immense swamp we
were parked in the middle of with things moving and jumping in the water and vultures in the air and in the trees.
John told me he used to be a frogger but hurt his back after years of working the swamp at night and hauling bags of
frogs and bending over to get them into a frog chute, a long pipe with a net on one end.
I asked him how he saw the frogs at night and he pulled out a miner’s helmet with a light on it. He said if you see two
small eyes shining back at you it’s a frog; two big eyes and it's an alligator; two very big eyes and it's the 19-foot
monster gator that lurks in the area, and then you start the engine and move from the area fast. My own eyes
opened big just then. Just to prove his point, John said he was bass fishing out here in a 6-foot deep water hole just
last year. As he pulled a jumbo big mouth bass from the hole with rod and reel, the giant gator sprang up from the
depths, and with his gaping jaws wide, snapped the fish, hook, line, and sinker in one bite, splashing back into the
muddy depths of the swamp hole.
John was a third generation frogger before he became an airboat pilot. I could tell that froggers were likely an
independent bunch, working alone at night in the dangerous swamps and probably did a bit of drinking in their
occupational solitude.
John started up the airboat and we skimmed over the surface of the mighty swamp like skaters over smooth ice,
stopping now and again when John spotted an alligator or a mother alligator protecting its young. These mother
alligators are the most dangerous and unpredictable, and will charge the airboat without warning.
| Froggers |
by Michael Domino
Copyright © 2008 by Michael Domino
| Short Stories Page 1 2 |
Got lucky, I guess.
Coopertown, Florida (Population 8)
January 5, 2008
January 5, 2008
Denis Proulx / Shangri-La Studio