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Saturday
March 20, 2010 Since 1922 |
How to make an alligator grumble
By Jane Howard Lee
Baytown Sun Published September 14, 2003 In honor of this weekend’s Gatorfest, I thought I should come up with column about gators. I have learned a thing or two about them over the years, and one thing in particular stands out.
If you happen to have a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and you ride it very slowly along the right spots along Farm-to-Market Road 565, revving the engine to make that grumbly-rumbly noise the bike is famous for, you just might get more response than you ever expected. There might be some human head-turning and some longing glances from wannabe bikers, but you might also elicit a response that’s a bit more on the wild side.
I bet the Harley-Davidson people never dreamed (and perhaps still don’t know) that they have built into their engine a sound that can stir alligators into some rumbling communications of their own.
That’s right. Alligators will often talk back to Harleys.
They might also respond to tubas and French horns and anything else that makes a rumbly-grumbly noise, though just who took a tuba or French horn out to the swamps and made that discovery is something that I have been unable to uncover, despite my dedication to research.
The Harley/gator response phenomenon is easier to corroborate, since passing Harleys are far more common on the roads through our swampier areas than are people tootling on tubas or blowing horns of any kind other than automobile horns.
I learned about this phenomena from the owner of a local alligator farm. During a visit there I found myself wearing waders, standing knee-deep in mud and the droppings slime of dozens of alligators in the maze of gator pens, when a Harley passed by and a chorus of gator voices responded. Since the gators were not closed inside the individual pens but rather were free to come and go within the entire enclosure with the pens merely offering some privacy, it was a bit hair-raising to hear several of them getting stirred up around me, and I was quite sure at first that they were discussing my nutritional value.
The Harley/gator response is probably of little value to the world at large. It will never help to achieve world peace, end world hunger, cure cancer — nor will it aid in the hunt for Saddam. Still, it might come in handy if ever one found themselves in an argument over whether alligators inhabit a particular body of water.
I occasionally see that same raised-hair response that I felt at the alligator farm in the formerly stray dog who has lived in our backyard for the last seven months. An unusually calm, quiet animal, she rarely barks. She ignores sirens, the barking of neighborhood dogs, loud motor noises from mowers, boats, four-wheelers, souped-up autos and yes, even passing Harleys. The one sound that gets more than an ear twitch out of her is that rumbling noise that occasionally comes out of the swampy land around the bayou at night.
The very first time I heard her barking at night I went to investigate and found her standing just off the porch, staring towards the bayou with every hair on her back bristled up to stand on end. She quieted when I joined her, and I clearly heard a gator grumbling out there. She has done it three or four times now, and each time it was in response to an alligator.
Growing up, a friend’s mother often repeated a rather inexplicable saying when she thought it applicable to some situation that troubled us ... “Don?t worry,” she’d say. “They can kill ya, but they can’t eat ya.”
Of course, alligators are one of the exceptions to her rule, and I think our backyard dog is well aware of that.
Jane Howard Lee’s column appears every Sunday in the Lifestyle section. Her e-mail address is bubbalee@ flash.net.
Baytown Sun Published September 14, 2003 In honor of this weekend’s Gatorfest, I thought I should come up with column about gators. I have learned a thing or two about them over the years, and one thing in particular stands out.
If you happen to have a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and you ride it very slowly along the right spots along Farm-to-Market Road 565, revving the engine to make that grumbly-rumbly noise the bike is famous for, you just might get more response than you ever expected. There might be some human head-turning and some longing glances from wannabe bikers, but you might also elicit a response that’s a bit more on the wild side.
I bet the Harley-Davidson people never dreamed (and perhaps still don’t know) that they have built into their engine a sound that can stir alligators into some rumbling communications of their own.
That’s right. Alligators will often talk back to Harleys.
They might also respond to tubas and French horns and anything else that makes a rumbly-grumbly noise, though just who took a tuba or French horn out to the swamps and made that discovery is something that I have been unable to uncover, despite my dedication to research.
The Harley/gator response phenomenon is easier to corroborate, since passing Harleys are far more common on the roads through our swampier areas than are people tootling on tubas or blowing horns of any kind other than automobile horns.
I learned about this phenomena from the owner of a local alligator farm. During a visit there I found myself wearing waders, standing knee-deep in mud and the droppings slime of dozens of alligators in the maze of gator pens, when a Harley passed by and a chorus of gator voices responded. Since the gators were not closed inside the individual pens but rather were free to come and go within the entire enclosure with the pens merely offering some privacy, it was a bit hair-raising to hear several of them getting stirred up around me, and I was quite sure at first that they were discussing my nutritional value.
The Harley/gator response is probably of little value to the world at large. It will never help to achieve world peace, end world hunger, cure cancer — nor will it aid in the hunt for Saddam. Still, it might come in handy if ever one found themselves in an argument over whether alligators inhabit a particular body of water.
I occasionally see that same raised-hair response that I felt at the alligator farm in the formerly stray dog who has lived in our backyard for the last seven months. An unusually calm, quiet animal, she rarely barks. She ignores sirens, the barking of neighborhood dogs, loud motor noises from mowers, boats, four-wheelers, souped-up autos and yes, even passing Harleys. The one sound that gets more than an ear twitch out of her is that rumbling noise that occasionally comes out of the swampy land around the bayou at night.
The very first time I heard her barking at night I went to investigate and found her standing just off the porch, staring towards the bayou with every hair on her back bristled up to stand on end. She quieted when I joined her, and I clearly heard a gator grumbling out there. She has done it three or four times now, and each time it was in response to an alligator.
Growing up, a friend’s mother often repeated a rather inexplicable saying when she thought it applicable to some situation that troubled us ... “Don?t worry,” she’d say. “They can kill ya, but they can’t eat ya.”
Of course, alligators are one of the exceptions to her rule, and I think our backyard dog is well aware of that.
Jane Howard Lee’s column appears every Sunday in the Lifestyle section. Her e-mail address is bubbalee@ flash.net.