Chapter 10: Alligators, Chores, and Plans

“That’s a two-part answer. There at Wheeler? No. It’s too far north for them. Inside the Portal? I have no idea. The people who set this up have no problem making giant critters or animated skeletons, so if they want alligators it shouldn’t be beyond them. It’s a good thing to look for, on the ‘Tips and RIPs’ board.”

“What makes it ‘too far north’ for them?”

“Okay, I’m gonna make you start watching “Animal Planet. You clearly don’t have a good feel for how the animal kingdom works. To start with, mammals and birds are ‘warm-blooded’. We spend a lot of energy just keeping our bodies at a particular temperature. I think that’s because of our brains. We have to keep our brains warm or they don’t work. That’s just my assumption, though. I could be wrong. So, because we have that internal thermostat, humans can survive anywhere they can keep warm and get enough food. The colder it is, the more food we have to eat, to fuel that thermostat.”

“Alligators, on the other hand, are reptiles. Reptiles and fish are cold-blooded, meaning that they DON’T have that body temperature regulation thing. Reptiles and fish are whatever temperature the environment is. If the water is 80 degrees, they are 80. If it’s 50 degrees, they are 50. And, how fast they move depends upon their temperature. Different reptiles are set up for different climates.”

“Alligators need a semi-tropical climate. They are active year around down in south Florida. Around north Florida and Mobile and New Orleans, they can survive during the winter but they pretty much just hibernate until spring. Basically, they need the summer to thrive. The farther north you go, the shorter the summer is. Past a certain point, they just can’t do it.”

“They aren’t smart enough to understand the problem, though. Come spring, the alligators down in Mobile Bay will start to move upriver looking for food, mates, and a nesting place. They’ll go up the Alabama River past Montgomery, then at Wetumpka some of them will go up the Coosa River. They almost never get as far as Gadsden before it’s fall and they can’t move fast enough to catch food any more. I’m not saying it never happens, the history books probably have times when it happened, but it’ll take a long hot summer for them to get that far. Am I making sense?”

“Yes. So, the Coosa at Gadsden may have poisonous snakes, but it won’t have alligators?”

“Not unless someone shipped them up and released them, no. And it’s closer to ‘the Coosa WILL have poisonous snakes’. They try to stay away from us, though. They are all too small to eat us, so we aren’t prey. And, we DO eat them, so they try to leave us alone. They only bite people in self-defense, people who won’t leave THEM alone. Anyone who gets bitten by a water moccasin is pretty much guaranteed to have deserved it.”

“And Decatur is too far north?”

“Two different ways. First off, Decatur is probably a hundred miles north of Gadsden. Summer is shorter, and all that. It could happen though. The problem is that Decatur is on the Tennessee River. There’s no connection. An alligator would have to climb over a hundred miles of mountains to reach the Tennessee. That ain’t happening. The only realistic way a gator could reach Decatur was if it swam all the way up the Mississippi to Illinois, then turned right into the Ohio, and then turned right again into the Tennessee River and swam upriver all the way to Alabama. By the time it got that far, everywhere it could go to rest would be covered in ice because it was already winter again. If we see an alligator up in Decatur, again it’s because some idiot caught it down in Mobile and released it up there.”

“And you learned all this from Animal Planet?”

“Oh, no. I used to be interested in the water, and I’ve studied Alabama’s rivers. The Tennessee is a major river, and it’s not connected to ANY of the state’s other rivers. Well, these days there’s a canal that connects the Tombigbee with the Tennessee, but I think that any alligator that tried to swim up that canal would probably get shot on sight. Nobody needs alligators that far north. And the turn onto US-278 should be coming up here, soon.”

We spent the rest of the trip talking about everything under the sun, while I kept an eye on the route. Once we were on SR-67 and we’d crossed I-65, the road went over a wetland area onto an island, then over more wetlands before reaching Decatur. That island and the surrounding wetlands were all refuge, plus a lot of river bank on both sides all the way upriver to Huntsville. Apparently it had been set aside from development because migratory birds needed it as a rest stop. The dry land, the water, and the mudflats combined to provide habitat for all the birds that needed it.

I had to be honest, though. I told them that I’d been looking at Wheeler Refuge on the internet, and one of the pictures showed ... an alligator. WTF? It turned out that I was right, it is too far north and they can’t survive up there on their own. However ... the US Wildlife Service periodically IMPORTS THEM to help keep the beavers under control. So, yeah, come summer it would be possible to get into an argument with an alligator. It probably wasn’t gonna happen in the middle of January, though. It was too cold for them to be active. It just wasn’t something to worry about this trip. If we came back in August? Yeah. We’d have to keep an eye out for alligators.

It was past five when we reached Wheeler Refuge, and in north Alabama in January, that’s past sunset. It was too dark to see anything, so we just continued on into Decatur and looked for dinner, then our hotel. According to the satellite photos, we should be able to see Point Mallard Water Park across the water, but it may not be lit up when it’s closed. Like, in January.

Nell had us in the Econo-Lodge right there once we crossed back onto dry land. Since it was right there, we went ahead and checked in and took our bags up to our two rooms, then went back down looking for dinner. There was a Longhorn Steakhouse, a Texas Roadhouse, an Olive Garden, a Mexican place, and a more traditional Italian place within a couple of blocks, but it was getting too cold to want to walk to them. It would be colder still when we walked back.