September of 2000, and I am south of New Orleans, paddling a rented canoe up a long narrow body of water, a sort of canal. I now know it is called a bayou. I grew up picturing a bayou as a swamp. Rather, a bayou will often be surrounded by swamps, or will connect swamps, and for hours I have been admiring tiny alligators sunning themselves on fallen trees. Then, less than ten feet away, I notice a snout, almost submerged, and a pair of eyeballs tracking me. Big eyeballs. A big snout.
On a theoretical level, of course, I understood that little alligators must grow into larger alligators. But here is this thing, evidently longer than a Cadillac, floating between me and the take-out spot. It has a blank look. It appears to have no thoughts whatsoever, except for an urge to bite down on something.
By this point I have been canoeing for years, sometimes in middling whitewater. I have never fallen out. The bayou is placid as stale beer, yet I suddenly feel a great sense of – what? – focus.
I had rented the canoe from a tight-lipped guy who’d posted a flyer in a Treme laundromat. I arranged to meet him at a boat ramp. He unloaded it and minutes later drove away in his van, after promising to return in four hours. Like most rentals it was heavy aluminum, battered, and stable. Hot to the touch.
Now I can smell my lunch warming on the metal and suspect the snout can, too. I think of those clueless tourists who pose next to bison and bears.
Later, a ranger tells me this particular gator is 16 feet long, including tail. Standing side by side, if such a thing were possible, my head would be approximately even with its belly. Which is exactly the point. Later still, and for years afterward, PBS will run a station ID showing a crocodile launching itself like a Trident missile from a muddy watering hole and clamping on to a careless antelope. Which, again, is exactly the point.
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