Genus: Slobus Americana
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The refinery looms as a dinosaur, for seven days we sunned, swam, and fished from the sandy shores of Lake Catahoula, our family vacation of 62. Seven nights in a musty cabin with spider webs, dead moths and rodents in the walls but we departed tired, dirty, and somehow satisfied. With his shirt plastered, in the days before AC the Old Man sails the DeSoto like a river barge pilot. Me and my kid brother captive in the backseat scratching bites, and pinching the need to pee. A billboard emerges ethereal from haze on the horizon: “Gordy’s Gator Ranch! See The Two-Headed Snake!” Pictured: a coiled, two headed, red eyed, fire-spitting viper. “Fer Chris’ sake!“ the Old Man proclaims, “Dis I gotta’ see!” Wheeling thirty three miles down a rutted road to a cypress shrouded, slat fenced sheet metal shack. Two bucks admission, Each! passed to a braless and sag titted hag, welcomed through the rusted turnstile by her snaggle tooth smile. Bent and twisted like wire, Gordy our amiable host, complete with pith helmet boxer band high above droopy trousers matter of fact in his declaration, “You’ll wanna’ stick around fer the feedin’.” A penned in, dirty, green pool my spine tingled by the hidden the depth could only be imagined. Yellow stained rats dumped from a pail a few gators swim indifferently swallow a rat if one happens in. A putrid rat pinned in a corner remains from an earlier feed partly explains the stink. Roused from a shoe box an earthworm limp in Gordy’s calloused claw but sure enough, milky eyed and two-headed a snake, in the loosest sense of the word. He proudly describes the mystic morning of discovery, by his sag titted wife near the rhubarb in her garden. "Dis is it? Dis is da snake? Oh, fer Chris’ sake!” The Old Man tried charm, then stomp and storm but Gordy never budged just smiled and shook his head knew no such word as “refund” so we left in a bustle. Ten minutes down the road, “Eight bucks, fer Chris’ sake.” This time spoken sadly in setback but I knew the Old Man would rally around a tale, growing with the passing miles to a ding dang dazzler for his mates at the mill. |