Alligators In The Park

New Orleans.  New Orleans is great.  My wife just attended a conference there and I tagged along for four days.  She was in meetings most of the time during the daylight hours, which left me with a lot of unsupervised roaming time.  And roam I did.  The French Quarter. The Garden District.  The World War II Museum.  More of the French Quarter.  On our last day there, I decided to hop a street car up to the New Orleans City Park.

The City Park is nearly twice the size of New York’s Central Park.  It’s a beautiful combination of waterways, green spaces, and Spanish Moss covered live oak trees. Not to mention an art museum and various athletics facilities. Some of the live oaks date back more than 600 years. When hurricane Katrina hit and the levees failed, most of the park ended up covered by anywhere from one to ten feet of water. Since then, I am informed that it has largely recovered, minus around 2,000 trees and some buildings.

I decided to rent a bike for two hours.  On a Tuesday afternoon, there weren’t a ton of other people in the outer reaches of the park.  Let me just say that nothing makes you feel like you’re going to get murdered and thrown in a bayou like riding down a heavily wooded dirt road, thinking you’re alone, and then having some guy step out of the woods next to you.  Thirty minutes into my ride, I decided that I needed a mission.  When I think of Louisiana and bayous, I automatically think of alligators. Were there gators in the park?  My phone would know.

“Siri, are there alligators in New Orleans City Park?”

“Yes Marc, there are, but do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Really Siri, this is the first time in six months that you have actually answered any of my questions with useful information and now you want to give advice too.”

“Marc, what would your wife say?”

“Zip it.”

“But Marc, the average alligator bite averages over 2000 pounds per square inch, or three times the pressure of a great white shark bite.”

“Full of information today aren’t we. My next phone is going to be a Samsung.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I spent the next twenty minutes on a fruitless search.  Then I ran into an old fisherman.  We had a short conversation, and he guided me to a trail that would eventually take me to a place where I might find an “eight footer” and possibly some others.  I had seen this trail earlier in the day and avoided it because of the whole, I didn’t want to be murdered and thrown in the bayou thing.  But away I went into the woods.  Being eaten by a gator didn’t seem as bad as being murdered.  At least it would be a better story.  Honestly, which conversation would you rather people be having at your funeral?  “What’d he die of?”  “Oh, congestive heart failure.” OR “What’d he die of?”  “Would you believe an alligator got him?”  “WOW.”

I reached the area that the fisherman had described and disappointedly rode back and forth scanning the water.  Nothing.  Then, after about fifteen minutes and five passes, I saw one.  It appeared to be about five feet long as it swam smoothly through the green water and vegetation.  I watched from about twenty to thirty feet away as it moved out into open water, stopping there momentarily as I tried to get a good picture.  Eventually it went behind a low hanging tree that blocked any good view that I had.  I climbed another tree next the water to try to get a better shot.  No luck.  I then became one of the misguided people in history who has thrown sticks into the water near an alligator to try to get it to move closer to him.  Again, no luck.

I had to return the bike and meet my wife for dinner, so I decided to be happy with the pictures that I had gotten, left my friend the gator, and pedaled back.  Thankfully, I was not murdered and thrown in the bayou along the way.  That would have been embarrassing.