My upturned hand clamped around its stubby front arms and throat. “There we go. We’ll get you to somewhere more fun than a pool.”
“That was the most awesomest thing I’ve ever seen,” cried the kid.
“Uh, you gonna let him loose in the swamp back there, or what? What if it returns? Then what? Can I shoot it?” The dad gestured to the wild thicket behind the house. “I’ll get my Glock and—”
“No, please don’t shoot it. It’s against the law unless you’re in imminent danger. I’ll take him far away and he’ll never come back. Lemme secure him in my truck then I’ll return for my stuff, OK?”
The dad nodded weakly.
It didn’t take me long to nestle the alligator in the cage in the back of my beat-up, cherry-red Ford F-150, which used to be Dad’s and happened to be almost the same color as my Gator Queen shirt. I paused to clean my hands with some lavender-scented hand wipes while taking in the neighborhood.
This was one of many new subdivisions in Wahoo, making the town look more like a suburban outpost of a big city than a small central Florida village. The homes here in Osprey Landing—that was the name of this development—were crammed together, generic stucco buildings with uniform electric-green lawns the size of mattresses. When I was growing up, this had been an orange grove, and my twin sister and I used to steal the sweet fruit and eat it at the edge of the swamp. Our hands and faces would be sticky with juice and we’d ride our bikes home.
Now there wasn’t an orange tree in sight, much less kids on bicycles.
With a sigh, I returned to the backyard for the last of my gear.
The boy was sitting with his feet in the pool, hunched over his phone. I scooped up my trusty duffel bag and sauntered over to Bruce, his brow furrowed with a mix of confusion and mild disbelief. He stood there, scratching his hairy shoulder as he surveyed the pool, likely questioning the sanity of his decision to settle in a place where prehistoric creatures appeared to have an open invitation to party in his backyard.
My sister’s voice popped into my head. Since I’d returned home, Vera had insisted that we hand out our business cards. Marketing, she implored.
“Here’s my card, in case you need anything else. I trap gators, snakes, iguanas, and turtles. Raccoons and possums aren’t my jam. I’m better with reptiles. Oh, and my sister is opening a specialty bookstore downtown. All romance novels. Maybe you and your wife want to stop by. She opens two weeks from today. I’m helping out. The address is on the other side of the card.”
My sister had affixed cute stickers with the store’s name and address to the back of my gator cards. She claimed that the combo was so quirky it would almost certainly draw business to the bookstore. I wasn’t so sure. It seemed a little weird, but this was Wahoo, a place so eccentric that this tactic just might work.
Bruce took the shiny red card and turned it over. “Wow. A girl who traps gators. Gator Queen,” he read slowly, totally ignoring my pitch for the store. “Weird, I thought I called a business called Gator King. A neighbor suggested you. You were actually the second place I called. I, uh, left a message for the first place, but they never called back.”
“The Gator King was Logan Andrews, my dad. He was the county’s contracted nuisance alligator trapper. He passed a few months ago and I took over his business and rebranded. I’d always go on calls with him when I was a kid, so he called me the Gator Queen.” Even mentioning Dad made my chest feel heavy. “This is actually my first job since taking over the business.”
He nodded slowly. “I see. Well, great job. How much do I owe you?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“Fifty bucks? That seems cheap.”
“It’s what private trappers are allowed to charge in Florida.”
“That’s a shame, considering you put your life on the line. You have a dangerous job, especially for a girl.”
I took a fortifying inhale. I’d expected some casual sexism, but maybe not in my first hour on the job. He extracted his wallet and counted five tens before handing them to me with a grin.
“Thanks again, Maggie. It was pretty crazy, finding a gator in the pool. That brute looked like it could eat my dog.”
“Nah, he’s actually a young’un. You should see some of the gators in the swamps. Fifteen-footers. That’s why I recommend the pool enclosure.”
“What do you do with the gators, anyway? Turn them into boots and belts? I heard that people here in Florida eat gator meat. I can’t even—” He pantomimed a gag.
“I’m the only trapper in the region who doesn’t kill the gators. Most trappers bring the big ones to a processor for meat and hide. The ones under four feet, I’ll take to a nearby swamp and release them. I can’t set the bigger ones loose because they’ll fight each other, so I bring those to my uncle, who runs the reptile sanctuary here in town. It’s called Tropical Acres, you might want to check it out, he does private tours. It’s a pretty interesting place and your son might enjoy it.”
“That’s nice you don’t kill ’em, I guess. Lemme walk you out. And tell me more about what’s in that swamp back there behind the house.”
I waved goodbye to the kid, who ignored me for his phone. “Well, there’s a bunch of turtles, some bass fish, and the gators in the canal. They roam around for food. So be careful. And please don’t feed them. That’s how they become nuisances. I only used the marshmallows today so we could take care of this quickly.”
We were at the back gate and he swung it open. “I’ll be honest, I was shocked when you drove up. You’re what, all of five feet, a hundred pounds soaking wet. I didn’t think a girl like you would show up to trap a gator.”
I raised myself up to my full height and attempted a cool stare. My sister called this my “intimidating garden gnome” look, which made no sense, but that was Vera.
His eyes fixed on my crotch, then back up to my chest. I shot him a glare. Pig.