Rabid Fun

I Remember The Squat Ugly Yellow Dog Joke

07/26/2010

Sunday, July 25, 2010

During a dry season in 1898 at Roberts Lakes in south Florida, 10,000 alligators gathered in the shallow water. When hide hunters began firing their rifles, “the shooting caused the alligators to stampede like cattle”.

Historian James Hammond, author of Florida’s Vanishing Trail, said, ““Explorers in the 1700s report thousands of alligators and crocodiles filling every river and stream on Florida’s east coast. These hungry predators line the shores awaiting their abundant prey. The annual mullet run brings great swarms of fish literally swimming into their open jaws, and turning peaceful tributaries into ‘pots of boiling water’ rising 25 feet in the air”.

Last week the Clinch County News displayed a video of a gator feeding frenzy at http://www.theclinchcountynews.com/v2/content.aspx?ID=23750&MemberID=1340 .

Here’s a still picture from that video which was filmed July 11th:

Ginny and I found this video of particular interest because on the last day of our summer vacation earlier this month, we planned for a fall vacation. And Stephen C. Foster Georgia State Park on the Suwannee River (where the video was made) was on our short-list of places to go for a week to celebrate our 42nd Anniversary.

It has cabins available, it’s within a hundred miles of home (my arthritis makes that my outside limit for sitting in a car), and it has access to the beautiful Suwannee River.

Last year we rented a cabin at Lafayette Blue Springs, a Florida state park about ten miles southwest of Luraville, where we swam in the Suwannee. I posted photos of that trip on November 16, 2009, in my archives on the sidebar.

We had such a good time that this year, God willing, we wanted s similar experience.

We chose another park for this year but Stephen C. Foster was a close second—but with this video of the feeding frenzy I don’t think we’ll be too anxious to swim in the Suwannee again.

When I forwarded this video to my eldest daughter, she reminisced about a family picnic, saying, “YIKES, Dad! I am so glad I was not in either of those boats! Remember when we swam across the Suwannee to look at the fossils in the limestone/rocks? That is one of my found memories of childhood just me and you exploring the rocks… I’m sure glad it wasn’t us, and a gator and swimming!! I love you Dad! Have a great weekend!

Once, when he was a teenager, Johnny, my middle son, and I, went of a weekend canoeing trip down the Suwannee with his church youth group. A bus took us someplace on the upper Suwannee where the group slept on the floor of a host church.

As a shining Christian example to the young people, I presented a devotional to the kids around a campfire that night.

The next day we put canoes in the river and floated down stream all day stopping to swim and explore as the current and the spirit moved us. Johnny and I had a great time splashing care free in the river.

Far downstream at the end of the day we all put ashore at a wooden dock where the bus was to met us. I stepped on a rotten plank which gave way, dropping my leg through the dock and barking my shin from ankle to kneecap. I said some words which had not been included in the previous evening’s devotions.

Stop your ears, tender young people! Stop your ears!

Say, speaking of young people, wantta hear a great joke? One from my Boy Scout days? From 60 years ago when I was young myself?

There was this guy who owned a pit bull dog named Cuppie, best fighter in the land.

He would walk his pit bull in the park and turn it loose on other people’s dogs and laugh to see his Cuppie tear the weaker dogs up.

One day he meets this man walking a squat, ugly yellow dog on a lease. The bully boasts, “My Cuppie can beat any dog. I’ll bet you ten dollars he can take that squat, ugly yellow wimp of yours”.

Cuppie rushed in for the kill.

Chomp! Chomp. The squat ugly yellow dog eats Cuppie up.

“Say! What the Hell kind of dog is that,” the outraged bully cries.

“Well, before I cut his tail off and painted him yellow, he was an alligator”.