April 28 2007

Well gang, it’s Spring, it’s crappie season and it’s also alligator season Our old friend Marcel Thibedeaux went down to a favorite bayou of his with a pail of shiners for the crappie and his .357 Magnum, just in case he saw an alligator.
He let the cool breeze carry his pirogue gently down the bayou, and was averaging about three crappie per beer. As the sun was just starting to go down, he saw what looked like two gators floating on top of the water. Of course, they could have been two logs too.
As he got closer, the one that looked like a gator’s head turned out to be too big, but the one about twelve feet further on and looked like a tail, twitched in that lazy slow way the they do.
Thibedeaux smoothly pulled out his .357 and cocked the hammer.
Suddenly, at the other end of the pirogue there was a huge splash, the tail disappeared, and the log that had been too big for a gator’s head had his jaws clamped on the stringer of crappie.
Now Thibedeaux, being pretty possessive about his crappie, grabbed the stringer with one hand, and pulled the trigger of the Magnum with the other.
The gator, who was a fourteen footer, pulled off a couple of crappie hanging on those little medal clips, and demolished the pirogue with what turned out to be a huge tail.
Thibedeaux wound up in the water with a stringer of crappie, a .357 Magnum, and the company of a really big alligator.
Now he knew that the brain of an alligator, no matter how big the alligator, was about the size of an English walnut. So the chances of him killing the creature with one snap shot were slim to none.
He wouldn’t give up his Magnum, and he wasn’t going to give up his crappie either, which dramatically affected his swimming technique.
A by-stander on the bank of the bayou said that he looked like a giant buzz-bait coming to shore.
Thibedeaux’s arms were still going like wind mills when his knees struck bottom, and he tore the right knee out of his jeans.
He stood up, turned around searching the surface of the bayou, and squeezed off a round at a shadow that was a little too big to be an alligators head.
It was a good shot, and splinters of wood flew all over the bayou.
Thibedeaux then calmly informed the alligator, the occupants of the bayou, and everybody for about a mile or so around that wasn’t stone deaf, that he was coming back, and that that gator was destined to become gumbo. In fact, he guaranteed it.
And speaking of gumbo, May 10th is the cut off date for recipes for the MB&GC cookbook. Especially you trophy winners.

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary