Gator on the Loose! by Sue Stauffacher

was the biggest.
    “You’re right! Claudius is our biggest alligator, but he used to be much bigger. He came from a zoo where he was in a very small pen. No one exercised him. They just fed him. He was four hundred pounds. He was so fat he couldn’t walk. He just scooted over the ground. We had to put him on a diet. Any guesses on what is alligator diet food?”
    Suggestions bubbled up from the group around the enclosure. “Lettuce? Birdseed?”
    David formed a zero with his fingers. “Nothing. No food for nine months. As you might imagine, he didn’t like us very much. We made him waddle around for some exercise, but no food. He’s much better now. A trim three hundred pounds. So get your cameras ready. I’m going to call Claudius.”
    David waited while people dug in their bags.
    “Claudius. Come!”
    Unlike Spot, Claudius did not need a repeat invitation. Water streamed away from his snout as he lifted himself out of the water and his legs paddled him forward. There were a few alligators between Claudius and the food in David’s hand. Claudius churned over them, stepping on heads and backs. The alligators near David scuttled away. Claudius was the king. He was the size of a movie alligator! Keisha thought he must be at least twelve feet long. When he opened his mouth, David dropped two pellets in. With one swallow, they were gone.
    Claudius liked his food! The cameras clicked away.
    Keisha heard her name being called. She turned to see Carmen hurrying toward them with a squirming bundle in her arms.
    “I thought before you left, you would like to hold our little guy, Alphabet Soup.”
    The other children crowded around Carmen and Keisha.
    “Let me see! Can I hold him, too?”
    The alligator lay still in Carmen’s hands, his little legs dangling, as if being carried by a human being was almost too much for him to handle. He was not evenhalf the size of Pumpkin-Petunia and had a band around his mouth.
    “Why isn’t he with the other ones?” the girl in the playsuit wanted to know.
    “Because he’s too small yet,” Carmen told her. “They might eat him. Or a blue heron or a sandhill crane might make him into dinner.”
    “Lady, can I hold that, too?” asked the boy in the baseball cap.
    “I’m going to show Keisha how to hold him first. You have to hold him in a special way to keep control,” Carmen said.
    She took Keisha’s right hand and placed her palm just beneath the alligator’s front legs. “Now curl your index finger up around its neck and close your left hand around its back legs.” As soon as Carmen had transferred Alphabet Soup to Keisha, the little alligator started twisting all over the place.
    “Just hold on,” Carmen said. “He’s doing the death roll.”
    Keisha was too polite to tell Carmen that she knew what the death roll was. She tried not to fight the alligator but to hold on and let him wriggle.
    “Keisha.” Daddy had come up behind her. He was letting her know that he was there if she needed him.“This is what the alligator was doing with Dan, remember?”
    “The death roll?” Keisha asked, taking some deep breaths.
    Just as suddenly as it had begun twisting and turning, the alligator stopped. It lay limp in Keisha’s hands, its little legs dangling again, eyes closed. Keisha held him up so that she could see his second eyelid, the scales behind his ear holes, his needle-like teeth. She didn’t care what anybody said about alligators. She thought they were adorable.

    “You can see why kids would want one,” Carmen said to the crowd around them. “What I tell children when they ask their parents to buy them an alligator is: What would happen if I put
you
in a little tank? You’d still grow big, wouldn’t you?”
    “Sweetie …” Daddy took Keisha’s hand. “We better collect Grandma and say good-bye.”
    Keisha asked Daddy if she could sit on his shoulders. She wanted to see the alligator sanctuary from a bird’s-eye view. Daddy understood. He bent down