Ketchup

I hereby dedicate this post to my dear friend Tim Boland, who requested "bizarre and whimsical vacation stories." I don't have much, actually, this vacation was a whole lot of floating of the waves of the great blue and lying in the sun and flying my wonderful kite with the picture of the sailboats by the setting sun on it. We flew it higher than the building we were staying in! But anyway, aside from all the relaxation, I would say that the most bizarre event would be our trip to Fuddpucker's, a Destin, Florida institution. The greatest attraction to draw the tourists into Fuddpucker's aside from their "world-famous t-shirts" was the live alligators. Tourists crowded around the railings, leaning over to gaze into the pit of doom to see the dread monsters. So, we looked over the rail, and there, down on the sand, was....vreet, vreet, vreet! a bunch of iron-colored, footlong lumps that did absolutely nothing for so long we thought they must not actually be alive! You know, they advertise these live alligators, and I expect 12 foot long beasts with vicious toothy grins. I expect trembling keepers to throw them whole coons or possums which they would swallow with one snap of their immense jaws. Instead, the "feeding" of these alligators was conducted by the children who stood around the pit, lowering down tiny bits of red something on a long fishing pole kind of thing, which the alligators were too boring to even pay attention to. All in all, I was very disappointed by the alligator.



The other thing that I found rather atrocious was that one of the keepers was standing with one of these miniscule alligators with its mouth taped shut so silly tourists could touch it w/o worry. Poor gator! The other thing that was pretty bizarre, besides the skin tones composed of tans/burns that these sun worshippers acquired, was the giant outlet mall that we visited almost every day. So much commercialism...my eyes are still trying to focus. It is so hard not to get sucked in. Okay, another story...this picture is of Armond, my frog-prince lover. Seriously, it's true! One night (subsequent to the lizard episode) my sister came running in panicked by the presence of a frog in the garage under my mom's car. After extracting the critter with a broom, I relocated him out to the yard so he wouldn't get shut in for the night. But then, only minutes later, I recieved the report that the same frog had showed up on our front porch. I looked out the window, and there he was, crouched by the door, obviously waiting to get in! So, Armond and I have developed a very special relationship. No kisses yet, but Armond is a very persuasive little bugger, and besides, he's so cute! Okay, that's all for tonight. Hopefully I will be able to post again this week.



Goodnight electrons, spinning through the jars,
S.