Bad Decisions and Alligators

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 4-foot-long alligator they found in Brooklyn this week. Most likely, it was someone’s pet and the owner decided to rehome it in the wild. (If you can consider Prospect Park wild.) Whoever the pet owner might have been, I’m reserving judgment. 

When I was growing up, we took all kinds of strange animals into our small, urban home in addition to the usual cats, dogs and fish. I don’t know what our mother was thinking. She either had a soft spot for animals or a soft spot for my sister and me, but if we wanted an animal, it was ours. (As long as we could afford it. No pony ever materialized, despite our pleas.)

Often at Easter time, in particular, we ended up with animals we had no business taking into our home. A few times, we had baby rabbits. Another year, baby ducks. And then there were the cute little peeps that were dyed pink. I can’t recall exactly how they came to live with us, but they did. 

Of course, the problem came after Easter had passed and the cute little babies grew into adults. We built a hutch for the rabbits, and a pen for the chickens. I recall the ducks swimming in our one and only bathtub. I think about all of this now and it seems bizarre to me, but at the time, it felt perfectly normal. 

At the end of the summer, the ducks were rehomed at a private pond. I have no idea what ever became of the chickens. But my point is, what may have seemed like a sweet gesture at the time always led to the difficult decision about what to do with these animals when they became adults. I remember crying each time they had to leave us. 

My mom isn’t around for me to find out how she dealt with this. I would love to ask, Mom, what were you thinking? How could you have done this again and again? Did it bother you when the animals grew up and you had to figure out how to move them out?

And then there was the alligator. I was in third grade and my sister Lorena took me to Florida with her. I had $5 for souvenirs. After spending $2 on a shell decoration with a lightbulb inside as a gift to my mom, with the remaining $3 I bought a baby alligator. I thought it was the cutest little thing, and I couldn’t resist. (Now, I think, EEK!) It was about 6 inches long and harmless. In true Kraft fashion, I didn’t think through the repercussions of this decision. I also didn’t tell my mom about it; I wanted to surprise her.

On the drive back to Ohio, I kept “Allie” by my feet in the backseat in a cardboard box  that was poked with lots of breath holes and lined with wet newspaper. I threw in a little ball of raw hamburger for him to nibble on. (How did I know it was a he? I must confess that it never occurred to me that such a hideous creature might possibly be female.)

Allie died before we made it through Georgia. I don’t recall being terribly upset over it; we hadn’t bonded. But I do remember some serious buyer’s remorse. I had spent most of my money on an animal that didn’t even make it home so I could show my mom. What a waste!

I still wonder how Mom would have reacted to my purchase. After all the other animals we had taken into our home -- turtles, salamanders, frogs, horned toads, hamsters, about a million prolific guinea pigs – I couldn’t imagine that she would have a problem with an alligator. But perhaps that would have been where she drew the line. It certainly SHOULD have been where she drew the line. It never got that far, so I never knew how she would have received the little beast into our home. Thankfully, we also never had to deal with an alligator that outgrew our ability to care for it. It wouldn’t have been pretty. 

So when I hear about the gator in Prospect Park, I don’t wonder so much about how anyone could take such an animal as a pet. And it’s hard for me to condemn them for dumping it at a public park. Bad decisions and alligators are a part of my story, too.