Trade stories?zedxrgal wrote:This may also call for my story when I was pulled over for swerving because my 3.5 foot monitor was trying to crawl into my jacket.
....
So when I was in college I lived at my mother's house in Titusville and drove to classes at UCF, about 60 miles away. Much of the distance was through a swamp known as the St. Johns River.
One evening when I was driving to my Intro to Discrete Mathematics course, a smallish alligator pops up over the bank at the side of the road and tries to dash across. It was terrible timing, though -- I was in a small block of cars and while I swerved, the car beside me didn't. Thankfully the gator wasn't run over, but he did take a knock to the tail and ended up stunned in the middle of a highway.
I pulled over immediately, u-turned to go the wrong way down the highway, then pulled over again into the median. I jumped out, ran in front of oncoming traffic, grabbed the gator in both arms (little bugger weighed a ton) and ran back to my car.
I looked him over as well as I could while I was holding him -- he'd taken some damage to his tail, he was missing several scales by his right ear hole, and it looked like his left rear foot might be broken. He was bleeding a little. But at least he wasn't smooshed! Luckily he was still out cold so he didn't object much.
One of the oncoming cars pulled over into the median next to me. It was ... a state trooper! Now at the time there was a $5000 fine for molesting gators, and here I am with a stunned gator in my arms. The cop pulled his car beside me -- notice that he didn't get out -- and asked me what the hell I was doing.
I explained that the gator had run in front of some cars, including mine, that he was injured and that I was taking him to the vet. The cop looked doubtful, but apparently the tears streaming down my face helped convince him. So he points out that my vet won't be able to help -- by law he couldn't touch the gator either -- and that there was a gator farm/rehab place a few miles down the road. He'll give me an escort, he says, and make sure I'm going where I say I am going -- and not, for instance, home to butcher me a gator.
I didn't expect an escort with sirens and lights, but that's what I got .. well, the lights anyway. It was only maybe five miles or so. When I pulled over at the gator farm, the cop pulled up beside me again and suggested that I unload the gator and pretend he had never been in my car. Then he took off.
It was during that drive, by the way, that the gator woke up. And he was not a happy gator. Since I'd put him with his head towards the middle of the car without thinking, and since my car was a manual transmission with the gear shift in the console between the seats, this was a problem. In order to shift, I had to use my right hand to tease him (wiggling my fingers above and behind his head) until he snapped at me, then dart my hand as quickly as possible to the gear shift. I knew this was a stupid plan -- gators are fast -- but he was still sluggish from the accident. And anyway I didn't have much choice.
To make the rest of this long story short, when I unloaded him at the gator farm and carried him inside, they freaked out and sent me back outside. (Okay, I had a writhing 4-foot gator in my arms. So?) I stashed him back in the car (running, with the A/C on slightly so he didn't fry) and went back inside, where they had me call Fish & Game. It took me 10 minutes of begging and sniffling to get Fish & Game to agree to come and another 45 minutes for them to show up, during which time the gator and I sat by the side of the road under a bush. The gator farm people brought me a bottle of water which I used on the gator to keep him cool and hydrated.
I never did make it to Intro to Discrete that day. And my professor wouldn't accept my homework because he thought I was lying. Hmph.