Gator on the Loose! (2 page)

“I do.”

“Maybe we could bring that and some buckets for fresh water. I don’t think chlorine is good for alligators.”

“Just one minute while I get the beach umbrella,” Grandma said as she stood up and looked around her. “Now, where did I put it?”

“It’s in the basement with the inner tubes,” Daddy said. “I’ll get it. I want to get that canvas tarp we put under the tent, too. Maybe we can roll Ally up like a bug in a rug.”

“You did it again!” Razi said. “You’re a poet and—”

“—you didn’t know it.” Keisha finished for Razi and grabbed her brother’s hand. “We’ll wait in the truck.”

Grandma took Razi’s other hand. “Everyone’s always in such a hurry around here. I suppose an alligator sighting means we’re not going to work on our cannonballs today. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to dip my toe in the water.”

Mr. Ramsey was out front to greet them. “It’s still there,” he said, as if, even now, he didn’t believe it himself.

Grandma was reaching into her handbag for her extra-big bottle of SPF 50 sunblock. “Get on over here, girl,” she told Keisha.

“As soon as we catch the alligator, you can put the lotion on.” Keisha ducked out of the way and followed Razi, her dad and Mr. Ramsey into the pool office.

“Don’t think you can escape me.” Grandma waved the bottle over her head. “I’m going to be standing at the entrance. When you step out into the sun, you’re mine.”

“The rest of us can get a look at it from in here.” Mr. Ramsey pointed to the plate glass window that looked out onto the pool. Keisha stared hard at the fiberglass alligator that stood at the very edge of the pool where the little kids played. It was so shallow you could walk right in after you got hit with the water that spouted from its snout.

There did seem to be something below it. Not a very big something as far as a full-grown alligator was concerned.

“Here.” Mr. Ramsey handed the binoculars to Daddy. “Have at it.”

Daddy looked through the glasses. “Yup. That’s your standard-issue reptile.” He passed the glasses to Keisha. “Can’t tell you for hundred percent positive sure it’s an alligator until I get out there. Might be a big lizard. Maybe a Komodo dragon.”

Keisha looked through the binoculars. It sure looked like something alive and scaly, but the legs of the big play alligator made it hard to see. Daddy started back to the truck to get his gear. Keisha didn’t bother asking if she could go onto the pool deck with him. Daddy had told her many times that until she was an adult, he wouldn’t allow her on any dangerous rescue missions. That meant eighteen, which also happened to be the age to get a tattoo—if she wanted one of those—or to pierce anything besides her earlobes.

“Can I at least go look at it from outside the pool fence?” she called after him.

“Me too! Me too!” Razi was hopping on one foot. The other was curled around his knee.

Daddy turned around. “Bathroom first,” he and Keisha said at the same time.

As Keisha took Razi’s hand and began pulling him toward the locker rooms, she called back to her dad, “If you wait a minute, I have a couple of ideas.”

“Let me get suited up first.”

Keisha headed toward the women’s locker room but Razi pulled back. “Mommy said when I was five, I could do it myself.”

“Razi,
please
…” Keisha just wanted to get back to the action. But as hard as she pulled, Razi resisted. He was getting strong! “Fine, but don’t take forever … and wash your hands.”

Razi disappeared through the doorway of the men’s locker room. After a minute, Keisha called through the tiled entryway, “No breathing on the mirror and writing your name. No unrolling the toilet paper.”

After three minutes, she knew something had caught her brother’s attention. “What are you doing in there? I’m counting to ten and then I’m coming in….”

Keisha counted to herself so she could skip a few numbers. As soon as she took one step inside, she bumped into Justin, the head lifeguard. He didn’t see Keisha because he was patting his face with a towel.

“Hey, Keisha. I was shaving. Mr. Ramsey doesn’t like it when we look scruffy. You can go on in. There’s nobody in there but Razi, and he’s looking into one of the toilet bowls.”

Keisha curled up her toes with their pretty painted nails to keep her flip-flops tight. She had never been in the men’s locker room before. But she had to get her brother. He was on his hands and knees in one of the bathroom stalls, looking into the toilet bowl. Just as Keisha reached him, he leaned forward and flushed, watching the flow of the water with great concentration.

Keisha grabbed his arm. “Come on, Razi. We’ve got an alligator to catch.”

“I was just thinking,” Razi said, “about how he got here. Wouldn’t he get drownded if he was flushed down the toilet and then swishy-swashed through all the pipes and then emptied into the pool?”

Keisha sighed. You never knew where Razi’s imagination would take him. She had to be careful not to rush her brother. If she did, he would lock his arms
around the toilet bowl and hold on for dear life. From experience, Keisha knew that when she tried to get Razi to do what
she
wanted him to do, he almost always fought back. It went faster when Razi thought it was his idea.

“Razi, if you let me show you the real alligator outside, I can explain it. You see, alligators are pretty much waterproof. They have little flaps that close over their nose and their ears, and they have more than one eyelid—it’s like wearing a pair of swimming goggles all the time.”

“Do you have to pay extra for those or do they come with the standard model?” Razi was now staring up at the cement-block wall. He had the same look of concentration he got when Daddy took him down to Bishara’s Friendly New and Used Auto Emporium.

“It used to be extra, but it’s standard-issue on all new models,” Keisha said, circling her fingers around Razi’s wrist. “What’s even better …” She waited until Razi got to his feet and started to follow her. He had that faraway look in his eyes, like he was imagining what it would be like to have swimming goggles on all the time.

“What’s even better is that they can close off their throats, too, and be airtight. An alligator can stay
underwater for twenty minutes, no problem, but”—Keisha made one more dramatic pause to get Razi out into the sunshine—“if it’s colder and its body slows down, an alligator can stay underwater for up to eight hours, Razi.”

“I want to see the standard-issue swimming goggles!” Razi broke free of Keisha and rushed for the fence that enclosed the pool. Grabbing on to it with both fists, he set up a playground-sized clatter. It was enough to scare the fiberglass alligator, let alone the little one underneath. Keisha thought she saw something move. Was that the alligator? Even outside the fence that surrounded the pool area, they were still too far away to see well.

Grandma was scanning the water from the other side of the pool. She stood on the pool deck near the entrance by the lifeguard station. That was the only way to get into the pool—besides coming from Mr. Ramsey’s office—so the lifeguard could see if you hadn’t showered or could blow his whistle if you were so excited to get into the nice cool water that you ran on the deck.

Nice cool water, nice cool water. Ooh!
That gave Keisha an idea. She waved her arms at Daddy as he emerged from the pool office in his big waders and the heavy canvas gloves he used for the raptors. He was dragging the canvas tarp with one hand and holding the fishing rod with the noose attached to the end with the other.

Daddy always swaggered a little when he put his waders or his big gloves on.

“Daddy,” Keisha said when he got close enough. “What does the pool water feel like?”

Daddy removed a glove and leaned over. “Cool,” he said. “Ahhh … cool. You think the little guy is going to stay put?”

“Who is going to stay put? Why?” Razi wanted to know. He was tugging on Keisha’s arm. “When can I see the goggles?”

“Alligators are poikilothermic, Razi,” Daddy told him. “That means cold-blooded. You are warm-blooded and can stay warm even when it’s cold by putting on sweaters and mittens. Cold-blooded animals like alligators and snakes get as cold as it is outside their bodies, and then they just—”

“They freeze up,” Keisha interrupted. Razi didn’t care about the science as much as she did. “Daddy, if you go slow, maybe you can put the noose around his snout. If his mouth is closed and we can catch him, then we can roll him in the tarp.”

“That sounds like a plan. As I recall, alligators have
lots of muscles for clamping down, but not opening up. Their mouths are easy to hold shut.”

“If he’s frozen, how come he’s running away from Grandma?” Razi asked, turning everyone’s attention back to the pool.

Later, Keisha would think that the sight of her grandma rushing toward that poor little alligator and waving her arms like she did when she was rooting for the Langston Hughes Elementary School girls’ basketball team—from an alligator’s-eye view—would have been enough to make his blood run cold even if the pool water had warmed up.

Grandma was shouting, “Get ready, Fred. I’m sending him your way!”

It seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t quite work the way Grandma thought it would. Instead of running away from Grandma and across the pool deck, the alligator scuttled deeper into the water. After a few kicks, he was able to dive down and swim underwater all the way to the deep end.

Daddy looked back over at Keisha.

“FTC,” they said at the very same time.

“FTC” stood for “Failure to Communicate.” When you worked with scared or injured wildlife, you needed to stay calm and have a good plan. Failure to communicate
was one of the Carter family’s biggest problems,
especially
when Grandma was in on the rescue operation.

Mr. Ramsey had rushed out to Grandma. He helped her back to the pool office by holding on to her arm—very OL—and was looking over his shoulder as if some monster had just jumped into the pool and not a poor scared alligator that was barely the size of the rescue tube.

“Looks like it will be Plan B,” Daddy said as he leaned back against the fence and crossed his arms, which made his waders squeak impressively. “Remind me again about Plan B?”

“The problem with catching him is that alligators can see all the way around their head … and they can feel when anything enters or leaves the water.”

Daddy crossed his arms the other way. “Goodness, this sounds like something the United States Army would be interested in.”

“Hmmm.” What Keisha wanted was to jump over the fence and get into the action herself. She was small enough to lie on the diving board and not let a shadow fall onto the pool. But she took one look at Daddy all covered up and decided not to even ask.

“They don’t have big lungs, so they can’t move fast for long. You could chase him around the pool until he gets ti—”

Keisha stopped. “What was that?” An alligator’s eyes were peering at her from the deep end of the pool. He was swishing his tail back and forth in the water!

She took Razi’s hand and pointed.

“He’s trying to get warm,” Keisha told Razi. She looked at the dark tarp absorbing sun on the pool deck, where Daddy had let it fall in a pile.

“I think he knows he has to get out of the water, Daddy. If you go throw the tarp over that play alligator, he might want to hide underneath it.”

Grandma was back on the pool deck waving the pole with the net attached, the one they used to skim off the leaves and bugs from the surface of the water.

That gave Keisha another idea. “Maybe we should get a bigger alligator to scare the little one!”

Daddy looked at Keisha over his shoulder. “Say
what?
Don’t you think one alligator in the city pool is enough?”

“It doesn’t have to be a real alligator. The little one just has to think so.”

It took Daddy a minute to warm up to Keisha’s idea, but then it must have clicked because he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled in the direction of Grandma: “Mom! CFC.”

“CFC” stood for “Carter Family Conference.” Most times when the Carters had a Failure to Communicate,
they needed to follow it up with a Carter Family Conference.