The Gator Hole

Sooner or later out here you'll meet the landlord. An alligator — maybe a young one slid down a bank, maybe a big old bull lying like a fallen log with just his eyes and nostrils above the water. And most folks feel a little clutch of fear, and give him a wide berth, which is right and proper. But I want to tell you what that old gator really is out here, because it may surprise you. He's not the villain of this marsh. He's the one thing keeping it alive.

Here's how. Come the dry season, when the rains quit and the sun bears down for weeks, this whole shining wetland begins to shrink. The ponds pull back. The mud cracks. And the fish and turtles and frogs — the whole living pantry of the place — start to die as their water disappears. But the alligator, you see, digs. With his feet and his snout and that great sweeping tail he hollows out a deep pocket in the marsh floor, a private pool, and he keeps it open and wet when everything around it has turned to dust. They call it a gator hole. And into that last water crowds every desperate creature for a mile around — the fish, the turtles, the wading birds that come to drink and hunt at its edge. It becomes an ark. The whole marsh rides out the drought in the puddle the gator dug.

Yes, he'll take his toll — a careless fish, a bird that stands too close; that's the rent. But without him, when the drought broke there'd be nothing left alive to fill the marsh back up. So show him respect, and keep your distance — but as you walk on past, know that the fearsome old fellow watching you go is the reason there's any show here at all. He's not the monster of this story. He's the keeper of it.