Seeing these trees at ground level was kind of strange. A couple of hours before I had been looking down on them; now here I was looking up. That emerald green carpet I had seen from the sky was still in the sky. I mean, these trees had no limbs and no pine needles near the bottom or even the middle of the tree. All of the limbs, all of the needles, all of the green didn’t start until about three fourths of the way up. And every single tree was tall and straight. I had never seen anything like it. Tall. It was as if every tree was the same age, and not one tree was any taller or shorter than any other tree. And straight. I’m used to trees that are bigger at the bottom and smaller at the top. These longleaf pines . . . they started off at one size near the ground and ended up the same size near the sky. And just like they were all the same height, they were all the same size around. I’m not saying that they were all the same. Each tree seemed to have its own personal space a respectful distance from every other tree. Maybe it was this space between them that made each one different from all the rest.
Without warning the trees were gone. Highway 29 had carried us out of the Conecuh and where there once was forest there now was treeless pasture. The shock to my eyes reminded me of how I felt as we flew over the treetops and the trees opened up around that small lake. Wish I’d never seen that lake. We could be setting up camp; instead we were headed to a Best Western to meet a county deputy sheriff so I could tell him a story that even I was beginning to doubt.
5
The Covington County deputy sheriff met us out in front of the motel. His name was Shirley Pickens. That’s right, his name was Shirley. In fourteen years I’ve never met a man named Shirley. My dad says in forty-two years he’s never met a man named Shirley. Here he was, though: Deputy Shirley Pickens. He had the uniform, he had the badge, he had the gun, and he had the name. Shirley. Didn’t look like a Shirley. He was at least six feet four inches tall, at least two hundred and thirty pounds. And this was no baby fat. This was like two hundred and thirty pounds of “I’m going to knock you on your backside if you call me Shirley.”
And yet his name was Shirley. He introduced himself that way, “Shirley Pickens.”
“So you saw this ‘event’ from an airplane widow?” Deputy Shirley Pickens was asking me, “an airplane doing about three hundred miles an hour at about five thousand feet. Do you know how high five thousand feet is?”
I didn’t answer. I was still stuck on his name. Shirley.
My dad jumped in to help me out, “Five thousand feet would be point nine five miles or one thousand five hundred twenty four meters or one point five two four kilometers—give or take.”
“Well, Professor,” said Deputy Shirley Pickens, “you’re pretty quick with numbers.”
When he called my dad “Professor,” I thought he was being a smart aleck; my dad said, “How did you know I was a professor?”
“One point five two four kilometers?” said Deputy Shirley Pickens. “You’re either a professor or a know-it-all, and you strike me as a nice enough guy. What about this fellow?” He looked right at me when he said, “this fellow.”
“He’s all right,” said my dad, “but I think he’s a bit intimidated by the badge and the gun and a man named Shirley.”
“It does sort of take ’em off guard,” said Deputy Shirley Pickens. “Sometimes they’re laughin’ so hard I can get the handcuffs on ’em before they realize what’s happenin’.”
He looked right at me when he said “handcuffs.”
I know my face was red. It had to be. I gulped, “I didn’t see it for long,” I said, “I just know I saw what I saw. Three guys . . . three people pushing a vehicle of some kind into a small lake. I guess it was small—everything looks small from five thousand feet. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Son,” said Deputy Pickens, “you did the right thing. I wish more citizens would come forward—courageously—as you have today.”
“Courageously.” He looked right at me when he said, “courageously.”
Deputy Pickens went on to say, “Look, I know pretty near every lake, small or otherwise, in this county and half the other counties around here. I’ll check it out.”
My mom said, “We’ll be at the Open Pond campgrounds in the national forest all week. You’ll let us know what you find out, won’t you?”
This was Mom’s way of saying, “Let’s get out of here and set up camp.”
Deputy Pickens agreed to keep us informed, and we headed to the camp site. I figured that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I figured wrong.
6
The sign said do not feed the alligators. Underneath someone had taken a Sharpie and written, “your leg.”
Do not feed the alligators your leg. Good advice. I spent a little time on the Internet trying to find out about the Conecuh National Forest before our trip. You know what it’s like, you start out with a simple search and one thing leads to another which leads to another which leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve got way too much information. I knew I had way too much information when I read about the man who had his leg ripped off by an alligator at the Open Pond Recreation Area. The Open Pond Recreation Area was where we set up our base camp.
Everything you read about alligators tells you something like, “Attacks on humans are rare.” I’m sure that’s what the one-legged man thought. Everything you read also tells you that alligators are “carnivorous” and “opportunistic” feeders. In other words, they’ll eat anything that gets too close as long as it’s meat. Gators will lurk at a water’s edge and can lunge about five feet to snatch an unsuspecting prey. That prey includes fish, turtles, birds, and even other alligators. And guess what? They enjoy a tasty mammal. You know, “mammals,” those hairy, warm-blooded animals like squirrels, raccoons, beavers, dogs, cats and me. Gators are America’s largest reptiles, and they are not considered “large” until they get to be seven or eight feet long. They can get up to fourteen feet or more and weigh a thousand pounds. When they get that big, they like to attack their prey by grabbing a leg or an arm and spinning until they rip it off.
Most alligator attacks happen in south Florida. Experts say that’s because humans keep moving into the gators’ natural habitat. The gators learn to adapt. Some have been seen climbing fences to get at pets. I couldn’t help wondering how the Conecuh alligators have adapted to people setting up nylon tents in their habitat around Open Pond.
Maybe I worry too much. According to what I read, gators get sluggish and don’t eat when temperatures get down around seventy degrees. When it starts to get cold, they burrow a hole in the ground and crawl in. They lie still and quiet until it warms up again. That’s because they are reptiles, and reptiles are cold blooded. Cold blooded animals have their body temperature regulated by the temperature of the world around them. When the temperature outside goes down, the temperature inside the gator goes down. When the temperature outside goes up . . . you get the idea. Seventy degrees or so seems to be temperature where they slow down to the point they don’t eat.