"Listen," I told the alligator, "You need to work on your elocution. None of that plastic-Gina-Davis-mask flapping."

"Guaaarrr...." It grumbled. God, the swamp was hot. Too hot for me but it's okay I suppose for alligators.

"No," I told the beast, "Pronounce! Rll the vowels out from around your tongue and hyperextended jaw." My tee-shirt was wrapped around his scaly foreleg like a band, you know, like a group. Banded together. It was, though. Because I was teaching the alligators. No more destruction of their habitat, no Siree. There are plenty enough golf courses and farting old people and condos with farting old people and golf courses in Florida.

"Gerrr...gerrtt...." The alligator skacked. He was trying, I had to give him credit.

"Better, much better!" I told him, sipping at the lasy soupy backwash of my 20 oz. bottle of diet Mountain Dew. "Now try the whole sentence!" I jumped up, my bare ass thowk!ing out of the Everglade mud as my feet sunk in. He was close!

The alligator snapped off a curious roseate spoonbill that had strangely landed on the lizard's head, right between his eyes, then cleared his throat, a sound that fell somewhere between a chainsaw and an engine-parched Studebaker trying to start. As the spoonbill flew grakking to more socially amiable climes, the alligator tried again: "Gggrrgget aaaawwwt rrrrve m...mmm...mmmwwrrr, mryyy sssthsshwommppp!"

"Yes! That's it, that's it!" I exclaimed like a head cheerleader. I had no idea how the developers would take to an alligator that spoke workable English with a lisp, but that wa sa worry for them not me. "Let's refine, refine, yes, but let's go now and teach the others!"

The 32-foot monster let me mount his back then swam us into the depths of the Everglades, toward the Okeechobee, where in a few hours we would be teaching ESL to about a thousand of his kin. I wished I had more Mountain Dew with me, but that would have to be a worry for later.

permalink