Roy and I were blessed with several outstanding pets. I guess our favorite was George Mutt, our adventurer. You’ve met him earlier in my story about my famous Lithuanian Fish-Finding Dog. I’ve always liked writing about our adventures with him – and some of them have been published in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” dog series books. From time to time, I’ll be sharing some of my better pet stories with you. And just so you’ll know, the stories are from real events.
This is a George Mutt story.
<i>“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – <b>Mark Twain</b></i>
George Mutt loved adventure and we, his “parents,” loved canoeing. George also loved being on the water – he had a labrador retriever’s soul in a yorkie body. So we often put George in his life jacket and took him along on our canoe adventures.
One day, when the day was waning, we decided on a day trip to Armand Bayou. On an earlier trip, Roy had seen an exceptionally beautiful, large buck near an oil company tank farm on the bayou across from the nature preserve that it ran through. Camera in hand, we thought we’d try to locate the buck again and capture his image for posterity. So, with Roy paddling stern and me paddling bow, George contentedly scanned the banks of the bayou from my lap as we embarked on our adventure.
It had been a wet, cool spring and George’s dives into, and returns from, the bayou left both George and me wet and muddy, but we were having fun. We paddled some distance and just before we reached the tank farm where Roy had seen the buck, the bayou necked down.
“Ok, now let’s start sneaking the right-hand bank, so we don’t scare the buck,” Roy suggested. We didn’t want to startle the buck into running off before we had a chance to get his picture, and we were half afraid that if George saw the deer, he would jump out of the boat and the chase would be on. We figured if we “sneaked” the opposite bank, maybe the deer would remain out in the open and George would stay in the canoe – or we could at least catch him in the water before he hit the opposite bank. That was the plan, anyway.
We paddled past the last bend in the bayou before the tank farm and were edging along the right bank just inches away from land. There was no deer in sight on the left bank, and we were totally absorbed in trying to locate it. I halfway noticed a gray clay hill on the right bank as we approached it. George was blissfully sleeping in my lap, tired out from swimming.
My paddle touched the bank and … the earth moved. In a split second, the hill turned into a 10-foot alligator locals had nick-named “Fat Albert,” who’s massive, tooth-filled head had swung around, staring at us up close and hissing his annoyance.
George, feeling me recoil in fright, sprang into action to protect me. We’d been paddling this bayou for a couple of years, and Roy had told me about this legendary gator. But since I had never seen him, even when we went looking for him, I thought he was just that – a legend. Today, George protected his family and leapt from my lap towards the gator’s open mouth. I screamed “NO!!!” and snatched George by the nape of his neck out of thin air, mid-leap.
How our actions did not turn the boat over I’ll never know, guess we knew subconsciously if we turned over we were done for. George was in a huff, not being able to attack our foe, but valiantly barked at the hissing alligator. “Fat Albert,” on the other hand, was annoyed being wakened from his nap. Tired of having his sensibilities disturbed by a yapping snack, he took one last piercing look at us, rolled down to the bottom of the bank and plunged into the bayou – swimming away directly under out canoe.
I asked Roy what we should do, and he said, “Nothing, don’t do a thing – and don’t paddle.” No problem. Both of us were prepared to brace the canoe if the gator tried to turn us over, and we watched in nervous silence as the bubble stream of the gator bisected our canoe’s position and traveled upstream.
As we recovered from our scare, we took note of what George was doing. He was proudly sitting on the bow of the boat, no doubt patting himself on the back from chasing off the marauder.
