Date Night in Mississippi...

So, my husband and I don't get to go out a lot. We would like to go out more, but between his schedule, and lack of planning on both our parts, it just doesn't happen very often. Of course, when we do go out, we are usually just so happy to be out of the house without the kids, that it doesn't really matter where we go, or what we do. Unfortunately, there really isn't a whole lot to do around here. You can go to the movies, or out to dinner, but there aren't that many restaurants to choose from, at least locally. You could also hit the "Beechwood", for a night of rednecky fun, or sing karaoke at Jacque's. I don't mind singing karaoke when most of the people I am with are worse singers than I am, but it always happens that I end up following people like Don, Lisa or my professional singing friend Maria. Following one of them, my singing then sounds like two cats having a "really good time". And God forbid you decide to get up from your seat to use the ladies room or something and your *friends* sign you up to sing Jimmy Buffets "Lets Get Drunk and Screw"...solo. Always a crowd pleaser.

So, last summer we were all out at my dads lakehouse with the kids. The girls and all of their friends were up watching some Chipmunk movie and had overtaken the entire living room. Hmm...what to do? HEY...my husband says...let's go gatorspotting! HELL YEAH. Me: Um...you sure that's safe? Absolutely, he assures me.

Not having been "gatorspotting" before, I wasn't sure exactly what this entailed. Again, 4,000+ hours of Animal Planet watching has failed me. So, we get into his boat, it's around midnight, several flashlights in hand, and the largest can of industrial strength mosquito spray made, and we are off. It's a date.

We assumed that the alligators would be on the other side of the lake where there are no houses. After an hour of searching up and down, and driving from one end to the other, we only spotted one lonely gator, or it could have been a coke can...we werent' sure. Surprising because we have heard that there are LOTS of alligators in Eagle Lake, and have seen a few during the day time. According to all of my research (yeah, animal planet watching...*and* I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express), they are nocturnal feeders. So, we head back and drive closer to the side where all of the houses/docks are. Guess what?

Under every single dock, in every single cove...it was gators galore. In fact, although you could only see their glowing red devil eyes, you could tell how big they were based on how large and how far apart their eyes were. We would see groups of them, smaller ones, and see large behemoths hanging out by themselves. I stopped counting after 25 and we still weren't 1/2 back to our own dock. By this point, I was freaking out a little. I didn't expect to see so many; I really didn't expect to see them so close to all of the houses. Some were only just a few inches away from the boat, and would put their heads under just as we were passing them and pop up on the other side of the boat. At least the big ones did that...they really didn't seem to have a whole lot of fear of us.

It looked like this, only the eyes glow devil-red.

My imagination went into overdrive then, and I started envisioning them knocking the boat over with their huge tails, or leaping up onto the boat deck with me. I was ready to go home, and call it a night. We finally get back to our own dock and he sweeps the flashlight around one final time...guess where we saw the biggest of the alligators? That's right, underneath our own dock. This thing was HUGE...I really do mean *huge*. Even the crocodile hunter would have been proud to catch this one HUGE. Needless to say, you won't see me, or any family member of mine out taking a night time dip.

Now that I have embraced my inner redneck, I really can't wait to do it again, only this time, I am bringing my camera.