When I was a young man, with no children and a decent lack of good judgment, I’d get into some pretty dangerous situations.

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If you’ve been following @papa-pepper for a while, you may be thinking, “Aren’t you the same guy who now grabs Snapping Turtles by the throat, flies Bumblebees on dental floss, and catches Pygmy Rattlesnakes & puts live Scorpions in his mouth?

Yeah, so by comparison, when I was young and reckless, things must have been a lot more dangerous, right?

Anyway, zoos can be strange places. For some, like @papa-pepper, it would be better if they were just petting zoos. I’m kind of a more hands on kind of guy, so looking at animals doesn’t always do it for me. Many years ago, at the Gladys Porter Zoo in south Texas, I may have taken things a little too far, and almost took things too far.

Basically, what kind of a picture is the cover photo, or this one?

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No matter how close I leaned, it just didn’t look cool. I mean I looked seriously cool, and the alligator looked cool, but together, with that much distance between us, the photo looked a little lame.

This particular gator was a good size, but sunning itself there, it didn’t look too tough.

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Neither did this one nearby.

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Obviously, the fences were just for the “common folk” because they need extra protection. @papa-pepper can handle his own though, right? Anyway, with @mama-pepper and a camera watching, in I went, ready to look a whole lot cooler.

Alligators can be strange creatures. For their bulk and size, they can look remarkably less reactive than they actually are. Being wise enough to know it’s a good idea not to startle a large beast, I didn’t even bother trying to sneak up behind it.

That would have disaster written all over it.

Calmly, and cautiously, I strolled up to the bigger one. (Bigger is better, especially in Texas, so this gator would be way cooler to have in the photo.) The other gator hadn’t moved yet, so I paid it very little attention.

When a person gets this close to a large creature capable of killing him, there is a certain nervousness that can’t often be helped. For some reason, I thought it would be good to let it smell my hand, like people do with dogs. When I reached my hand within inches of its face, it only blinked slowly in response.

In hindsight, I think it must have been wondering if something was wrong with me. It was most likely very unfamiliar with such behavior, and didn’t know how to respond to my gesture. Since that went well, I thought I might pay it a little respect, and made a big mistake.

As it turns out, you may not want to bow your head towards a large alligator, even if you are attempting to get a really cool photo.

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SNAP!

CRUNCH!

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There is a certain interesting sensation you get when a large beast suddenly clamps down upon your skull with a massive mouthful of teeth. The sound inside your head of teeth scraping on skull bone is peculiar, and I can’t even begin to describe it.

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Before I knew it, I was being dragged towards the water. Now I’m a pretty good swimmer, but I had zero experience swimming with an alligator attached to my head. On the bright side, I could hear my wonderful wife clicking away on the camera.

"This is gonna look so cool!” was all that I could think.

As we neared the waters edge, I could just barely hear @mama-pepper finally begin to evaluate the situation and verbally respond to it.

“Papa, we need to head over to the primate exhibit soon if we want to see the monkeys before they close!”

That woman is very intelligent, and she had me there. We only had about 20 minutes until the zoo closed, and the apes and monkeys were a good 5 minutes away on foot. It would take us at least 10 minutes to check them out and get some photos. A little longer if I was going to sneak in for a cool photo. Women can be so practical sometimes! I had to act quick!

I know that gators will roll will their prey inside the water, but we weren’t quite on his home turf yet, so I pulled a fast one and used his own trick against him. I tried to think very hard to help shrink my head, and then quickly spun counterclockwise and twisted my head right out of its toothy mouth.

Thankfully my neck held up! After years of head banging to heavy metal, that old neck of mine was well prepared and solid!

Another great blessing was that I had a red bandana on dreadlocks can be impressively absorbent. By the time I jumped on top of the gator for one last cool photo, you couldn’t even tell how much my head was bleeding!

Just look at how cool I look, even after all I had been through!

Yes, I know that the photo is a little blurry, which almost makes the gator appear to be a fake, but how steady would your hands be if your husband had almost just got himself eaten by an alligator? I think @mama-pepper did an excellent job, considering what just happened and that we did not have a tripod.

If you liked this story, let me know, and maybe I can share about the time I got to ride a Tortoise 8 seconds when it tried to make a break for it.

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FOLLOW

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This post was tagged in fiction for a reason.