When I was 18 and a newly minted graduate of Denham Springs High School's Class of 1997, I went out to Ruston, Louisiana, to attend Louisiana Tech for 2 summer semester. My reasoning was that I'd attend out there, get 12 hours of credit, and then transfer into LSU as a first semester freshmen, but I digress. I roomed with a guy from Vidalia, Louisiana (home of former LSU signee Prentiss Jenkins), by the name of Jim...Great guy, and a country boy the bone. The first weekend in Ruston, he invited me back to his home in Vidalia. I accepted, and on that Friday night, we drove around Vidalia and Natchez, sampling the local female flair, as well as drinking copious amounts of Bud Light (There was a designated driver)... On Saturday, we went to Wal-Mart and bought materials necessary to build 'jiggers', and then went out that night on my roommate's boat on the Tallulah (I believe that's the name) River. The intent was to go "frogging" Armed with our "jiggers" and one of those 2 million candlepower spotlights, we went out with an icechest of adult beverages and some phillies we had met up with the night before. A fun night was had by all, but that's not the point. Here's where the words to live by are for this Florida game... My roomate at one point saw "eyes" flashing at him that didn't belong to any amphibian in the water near the bank of the Tallulah River. He promptly gets his .22 revolver out and fires a few rounds into the water in the general direction of the "new eyes"... He then promptly removes his shirt, takes off his sandals, and dives into the water. Straight out of one of those movies, you don't see him for a good 5 seconds. All of the sudden, he comes up for air, sporting a 4 foot long alligator he's grabbed around the snout, yelling and screaming... Don't ask me how, but somehow, we get the gator into the boat with my roommate and ductape his snout shut...He held him down, and I drove us back to where we put in... I asked him afterwards-he brought it back to his truck and put it into the pond near his house-what the hell he was thinking... He replied matter-of-factly..."Gators ain't sh!t as long as you surprise 'em and show 'em who's boss from the get-go." Words to remember this week...
I wasn't sure how that one would go over...But, I got to thinking about how he caught that Gator, and what he said... It's better than talking about Auburn...
