Bucko's World

Entry Date: Sunday 9th August 2009
Jet lag is a strange phenomenon. You’d have thought that having gained five extra hours yesterday and then stayed up to the equivalent to four o’clock in the morning would’ve meant we’d all sleep like the proverbial, and indeed rather clichéd log. But my brain is having none of it. Which is why I find myself slipping on my shorts, lacing up the Asics, and tiptoeing out of the house at the ungodly hour of six o’clock to go for a run.

To describe the morning as beautiful would be as big an injustice as calling Usain Bolt a bit quick. It’s better than that. The sun is blazing, it’s already a balmy 80° F and the garden sprinklers are spreading rainbows of light all up the road. I like it. I don my shades, set my watch and head off towards the main road to have a look where we are.

When I reach the main road I turn and run towards the development next door to us. It looks like it will only be about a half a mile up the road and there’s a lovely new bit of pavement running toward it. Unfortunately, long and straight can sometimes prove deceptive, and it’s not long before the footpath suddenly ends and all that is in front of me is an overgrown grass track to separate me from the storm drain that runs down the whole length of the road. I’m tempted to just keep running along the grass but then something prickles in my memory and I think better of it and turn home.

You see, in England, a drain is something just about big enough to lose you car keys in, if you should happen to be so clumsy. Here, a drain is big enough to take the car, all its passengers and whatever you happen to be towing at the time. They’re big, and have to be the way the rain falls out of the sky a billion gallons at a time here. No, it’s not the water or how big they are that make me not want to risk slipping on the grass and arse over tit into huge ditch that worries me. It’s what you find lurking at the bottom when you get there.

Indulge me if you will. You’re driving along somewhere in England and have got to that moment where the term “breaking your neck for a piss” doesn’t do it justice anymore. So you stop by the side of the road, jump over the nearest fence and relieve yourself of your urinary burden. The worst thing that can happen to you is a bull will give you the evil eye, or you land in a pile of horseshit. Try that in Florida and you could well find yourself whilst mid flow confronted by a toothy grin and never able to tell the joke about counting to eleven again……

And so it proves that discretion is the better part of valour, because as I run back along the path towards our little homestead something in the drain catches my eye. Sitting there, bold as you like and grinning needle sharp teeth in the sunshine, is a cold blooded, black eyed, Florida Alligator.