For those who read my first book, you know this really happened to me. I was just 17 when my future husband Nokosee, also 17, used me as gator bait to lure his pet 18-foot gator Haalpatee out of a pen my dad, the "Great White Park Ranger of the Everglades," had used to "quarantine" it for future "disposal" (it had made the mistake of following Nokosee and me into a Seminole tourist trap on the edge of the Everglades which, of course, created quite a stir to say the least-- especially when my dad got all Rambo and captured it in front of the gumbo limbos* and their cameras). The pen was in the backyard of the Ranger Station, the place I was forced to live each summer since I was 12 when my parents got divorced. The station was on Seminole land deep in the Everglades and the only thing it had going for it was air-conditioning. No cable. No Internet. Nothing.
Anyway, if you follow the links to the above story, you'll see what even a small gator can do. Haalpatee on the other hand destroyed the Ranger Station as Nokosee coaxed it to follow us through the place and out the front door to our midnight escape back into the Everglades.
*Gumbo Limbos are native trees sometimes referred to as "tourist trees" because of their red, peeling bark, you know, like a tourist with a bad sunburn.
Anyway, if you follow the links to the above story, you'll see what even a small gator can do. Haalpatee on the other hand destroyed the Ranger Station as Nokosee coaxed it to follow us through the place and out the front door to our midnight escape back into the Everglades.
*Gumbo Limbos are native trees sometimes referred to as "tourist trees" because of their red, peeling bark, you know, like a tourist with a bad sunburn.
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