There's been some confusion…okay, a lot of confusion…concerning the origin of my whimsical Gator Guts post card.

We were driving west mid-afternoon on SR 520, just past the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp, homeward bound after the CHS Class of '65 2000 mini-reunion in Cocoa Beach (apropos) when I noticed what looked like a broken utility pole by the side of the road. Normally I can cruise right by the hapless opossum, the luckless armadillo, the too brazen raccoon, without rubbernecking, but it's pretty darn hard to miss a "What's This? An Eight Foot Gator!" laying half out in the highway.

So I stopped, checked to see if there was film left, and recorded the permanently prone reptile. I thought briefly about trying to salvage the skull, but the thought of a hot drive home for another three hours kind of put me off that train of thought.

So here it is. This wasn't made up, hijacked, or stitched together in Photoshop. Well, the type effects were added, but that's it. Somewhere, someone limped home with a pretty well whacked front end (note the skid marks), and one hell of a story about driving on Florida's highways.

Oh, P.S. About a year before this happened, we were headed southeast on I-10 out of Baton Rouge down to New Orleans when the just as dumb cousin to this smashed to smithereens pair of boots and a purse came lumbering across the interstate right in front of us. Because it was daylight, my driving skills were up to the task of dodging the deranged vertebrate. Can't say it, or I, would have survived at night, given a gator's disdain for side marker lights and such.