Greetings, Dear Reader! Once again, it is I, The Happy Pessimist, returning to bring you new tidings of the rapidly impending Apocalypse.<\/p>\n
I reside on the banks of the placid Charles River in The People\u2019s Republic of Massachusetts. Imagine my horror when the Boston Globe<\/em> (November 13, 2025) reported that a fisherman, also on the Banks of the Charles, had reached into the stream and brought forth a baby alligator. Now, this strange occurrence induced me to contact the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. These worthies assured me that there was no cause for alarm, and that the creature had undoubtedly been released into nature by an owner who had grown tired of the boring little beast.<\/p>\n A likely story.<\/p>\n This is clearly a bureaucratic smokescreen released by the bureaucrats (who else?) to prevent panic among the populace. Because when your Interlocutor sees a baby alligator, the question that immediately comes to my mind (and yours too, no doubt) is:<\/p>\n WHERE ARE MOMMY AND DADDY ALLIGATOR?<\/p>\n This, your Interlocutor assures you, is not a trivial question. Several years ago, I was in a small flat-bottomed skiff peacefully drifting along the upper Amazon in Peru (I am not making this up). Over the two or three inches of freeboard, I watched fifteen-foot-long black caimans (South American alligators) swimming by, well within chomping distance of my tasty self. Several of my companions nevertheless decided to jump into the water and swim along. Miraculously, none of them were eaten, more\u2019s the pity.<\/p>\n Not everyone in similar circumstances is so lucky. A few years earlier, I was in Belize on a similarly caiman-infested river, and was watching children happily swimming away. When I asked one of the locals if this behavior was risky, he casually remarked that several kids had been eaten the prior week. Apparently, as is the case in the Mysterious East, life is also cheap South of the Border.<\/p>\n The Louisiana approach to alligators strikes your Interlocutor as preferable. On the New Orleans waterfront, right at the foot of Canal Street, you can purchase barbecued alligator on a stick.<\/p>\n Yum.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greetings, Dear Reader! Once again, it is I, The Happy Pessimist, returning to bring you new tidings of the rapidly impending Apocalypse. I reside on the banks of the placid Charles River in The People\u2019s Republic of Massachusetts. Imagine my horror when the Boston Globe (November 13, 2025) reported that a fisherman, also on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1241","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P38V5o-k1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1242,"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1241\/revisions\/1242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithdoom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}