The Carolina Quarterly. 48 (1995) 1: 59-69. Gatorland, A Fable Jane Kuenz (for Tom Rabbitt) The other day I was walking through Germany before the park opened. The sun had just come up. I was really in the mood. It was kind of foggy. The park looks good with nobody in it. It's great. You walk around and it's so quiet. All the people are gone. It's really magical. I love it. At night, there's a lot of people working, hosing it down, but in the morning, it's like a sleeping dinosaur, a sleeping dragon. --Mark How can we talk about the monster among us? It's July in Orlando. The heat closes in like a vice on the city. All week I wind around the same sinkhole on Bumby Avenue, the same parade from home to town, my errands seeming to lead to this one spot, sunk and settled in the middle of the road. The once elegant homes along the circle are also settled; this is an old sinkhole, a lake, the outsiders say, here, in Orlando, "the land of lakes." It's nearly a perfect circle. That's how you can tell them, the lakes from the sinkholes. The drainage ponds are another matter; designed to catch the runoff before it floods the roads, the ponds appear and disappear with the weather, opening up at the edges of parks, on the dead ends of city streets, where the children play. The city makes plans to build fences, but knows it lacks the funds. Others don't care: their children are grown, they like this area, the fence destroys their view of the lake. In October, another child gets lost in his backyard and doesn't return. You look out and try to see him: The landscape shifts slightly in the rain. But today there is no rain, just flat glare and heat in 1 the mid 90s. It will stay this way until October when the children have disappeared and the crowds at Disney thin. And me? I've spent the morning interviewing, but I'm putting away all that. This afternoon we have special plans; I'm taking my nephews to Gatorland. Gatorland—just the sound of it throws Disney in relief. Not adventures of just any kind, but gators. For Marc, Bryan, and Chris, this is the perfect ending to a perfect week. For four days they've talked with the animals: Goofy and Minnie at the Magic Kingdom, Baby Shamu at Sea World. They are desperate for more and, particularly, for this last outing. The long drive down I75 from Atlanta has alerted them to its pleasures: "Gator Shows Daily," the signs announce, "Feed the Gators at Gatorland," "Have Your Picture Taken with a Gator," "Live Gator Wrestlin,'—Cracker Style." Conscious that we are entering a Flannery O'Connor story, but trying nevertheless to be postmodern, I have themed myself for the occasion: My salamander earrings become gators for the day. The boys are impressed. The conversation becomes familiar. We debate whether alligators are or are not related to dinosaurs. They offer their most recent gator tale—the one they saw in the back of a pickup on the Bee Line from the beach, its tail flipping ominously against the red metal. I tell them how Margaret Atwood showed up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, thinking she'd find alligators there. We laugh at her obvious ignorance. It's going to be a great day. A young man approaches the lifeguard overlooking the packed "beach" at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon. Apparently a Midwesterner, he adopts the pose of knowing native: "Man, I think it's cool the way you got that alligator in there for the kids to play with." A small panic ensues. The lifeguard tries to corral the swimmers and alert his supervisor at the same time. The young man, abandoned and now conscious of his error, remains standing by the lifeguard's chair. "What?" he says, "You mean they're not pets?" 2  Gatorland is a local legend. Opened in 1949 with a few huts and half a dozen alligators, Owen Godwin's themed zoo has expanded since then to over fifty acres and 4000 reptiles. A monument to tackiness, it sits on Highway 441 where for forty-five years it has waited for the rest of Orlando to catch up. And catch up it has. Extending clear to Kissimee, Orange Blossom Trail is quite possibly one of the ugliest stretches of road in the Eastern United States, a more or less direct result of Disney's entrance to and consequent effect on the area. During that first decade, the seventies, Orlando's growth figures—both in tourism and population—were, by all accounts, remarkable: arrivals at Orlando airport rose 2,098%; car traffic in the area increased 433%; and tourism in general in and around Orlando was up 648% while the rest of Florida dawdled at 46%1 In 1972, Orlando was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. In 1990, it still holds that distinction for cities with populations over a million: up 53.3% since 1980. Currently, a thousand people move to Florida daily, all wanting to live in the same place, near Orlando, on a lake. The steady stream of people and the services necessary to appease them have had their effect: Orlando needs a date with a zoning board, and, as with many of its interactions with Disney, the city discovered too late what price it would keep paying for living in the shadow of Cinderella's Castle. The company had sunk its teeth in and would not let go. Despite the offer and acceptance of massive initial monetary incentives, the city and state did everything it could to make Disney comfortable in the area. Laying and maintaining roads and public utilities were an early and continuing problem; the ever increasing gap between the cost of living in a city undergoing such rapid changes and the wages paid there is another. The first flush of higher median family incomes and increased employment—119% from 1970-1980—quickly subsided into the mundane reality of decreasing median real incomes. There were more jobs but lower wages. Disney jobs, the bulk of which were filled initially by women and teenagers, were designed to buttress an income, not provide one. Meanwhile, the city proper has redone 3 itself into assorted themed environments deemed successful to the extent that they distract tourists' attention from the decrepit sprawl of Orange Blossom Trail and the people consigned to it: International Drive sports Tudor castles and aquatic dinner theaters; downtown is half French Quarter, half Emerald City; and, since October, 1993, there is "Splendid China": a national geographic tour of China by way of "mini scenic spots"—smaller-than-life versions, fifty-six in all, of such things as the Palace Museum, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, and a Confucian Temple arranged in forced perspective for the discriminating traveler. On May 8, 1981, after almost a year of drought, a hole opened up in Winter Park, a North Orlando suburb. Eventually gaping 1000 feet across and 125 feet deep, the hole devoured a three bedroom home, a municipal swimming pool, parts of three streets, several trees, five cars, a camper, and one fourth of an automobile dealership. In the same month, smaller sinkholes appeared in Altamonte Springs, Windermere, Lakeland, Auburndale, Lake Wales, and Tampa. Not all of Florida looks like this. The terrain in parts of the middle of the state is rolling and lush, a beautiful landscape, dotted with lakes, most natural, and the thoroughbred stables for which the area seems to have been planned. It ruins the effect to say that the whole of it was formed by centuries of sinkhole activity, but there it is. There is a science of sinkholes for those who care to learn it. Much of the surface of Florida is supported only by water that has filled in where layers of limestone have dissolved. When drought lowers the water table, the ground above gives out. In other words, the direct cause of sinkholes is drought; the indirect cause is water, too much of it, under the ground, the ground almost not there, not ground at all, but water either dropping too low or threatening to come up again. The whole state is a sinkhole waiting to happen. It's future form will be a lake. 4  Gatorland, too, is not like Disney; it is the genuine article: "The Alligator Capital of the World," where one goes to see the "real" Florida in its "original" form. Gatorland always puts "real" and "original" in quotes. In fact, Gatorland plays up its roots, translating them at times, as the signs predict, into a kind of self-conscious hick image: Georgia crackers in Florida; cowboy boots at the Gatorland Boutique; alligator "vittles" at Pearl's Smoke House. There, in the center of the state, it stakes its claim to the American South, not the transplanted Northeast and Canada of Miami Beach or the California of Disney World. Its attention to its own originality has paid off. In contradistinction to the rapid growth in tourism since Disney's Orlando debut—though not unaffected by it: admission was free until the early 1970s, that is, until Disney— Gatorland's rise to its present glory has been long and steady. It's always been a hit. This year half a million people will walk through the yawning plastic jaws that form its main entrance and line up to see the "Gator Jumparoo," "Snakes of Florida," and cracker-style "Gator Wrestlin." We count ourselves lucky among them and pay our fare, a real renegade Disney family: three children from miscellaneous entanglements and the aunt who'll never marry. A seven foot alligator peers through the screen of a low, open window in a suburban home in Kissimee. The woman inside momentarily debates seeking advice from the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. She abandons this effort when the alligator pokes its snout into the screen and, in a movement she would later describe as "scrunching," collapses the screen in its mouth and climbs through into her living room. The dogs go wild. Her husband produces the family gun and shoots the alligator, several times, but at least once, the killer, above the eye. "Where do they get 4000 alligators?" he asks me, face aglow. "Child," I say, prepared to lie, "they grow them of course." Indeed, they are growing all around us. The ground moves as we follow the raised wooden walkway over what our map says is an 5 "alligator breeding marsh." But we can't see them; like sandcrabs on the beach, we look and nothing's there. They seem to be swallowed up by the foliage or each other's own continual slow movement. "They're not as close as they appear," I reassure my wards, but they're not concerned. The boys want them closer, the way boys do. They do not ask why Gatorland wants 4000 alligators so close. They take as a matter of course the shops we pass along our way, the collection of "alligator products" arranged in the window. Educated already at EPCOT, they pass up the opportunity to browse through Gatorland's materials explaining its dual role as a "major research facility" and "commercial alligator farm." The story of this happy symbiosis is embedded in the recent history of Florida's most famous inhabitants. Hawking itself in 1949 as an exotic refuge for quickly disappearing species—a kind of Jurassic Park of the South—Gatorland now basks in the excess produced by strict environmental and population controls. Most of these have been in place since the 1940s, but were effectively reinforced in the early 1970s when the Lacey Act made it a federal violation to ship ill-gotten alligators across state lines. The protective measures have been hugely successful, so much so that the state's alligator population is not only replenished, but, overflowing. In fact, the very success of state and federal protection laws, in conjunction with the state's other efforts to better itself, have produced an overcrowded population, a portion of which—the "nuisance alligators"—is taking a liking to people's back yards. Pushed out of their natural habitats in river basins and large lakes by overcrowding, recreational sports, and residential and commercial development, the alligators are venturing into unlikely places to find food and a place to live: golf courses, drainage ponds, swimming pools, and neighborhood lakes. They're looking for water. Once they grow beyond four feet, they're not scared of much, being bigger and uglier than anything they might care to eat. What they care to eat are turtles, snakes, and small mammals. They like dogs. Along with increased automobile traffic, alligators are held responsible by state officials for a decrease in the number of key deer, 6 a native subspecies. Over 4000 nuisance alligators are removed every year in response to 10,000 complaints. Actual human attacks, though still less likely than a really good boating disaster, are on the increase. Once endangered, then pampered and protected, there are now apparently so many alligators that the state is considering some restricted game hunting just to control the population. The miracle of capitalism has helped the situation by making it possible to preserve the alligator by consuming it. Gatorland is in the alligator growing business. Next to Gatorland's brochures, I pick up another inviting me to join the F.A.T.A., the Florida Alligator Trappers Association. According to its brochure, F.A.T.A.'s purpose is "to promote the well being of the alligator, his habitat, and the alligator industry." It reminds me that "each purchase of an alligator product is an investment in the sustainable use of the alligator and his habitat." The production and consumption of alligators and their "products" is a crucial part of maintaining the steady flow of the "American Alligator Cycle of Protection." By supporting the "sustainable use" of the alligator, F.A.T.A. says, "we help place Nature on the list of ECONOMIC ASSETS and OFF the list of Economic Liabilities." On the front page of The Orlando Sentinel three photographs arrest my attention: In the first, a six-foot chain link fence separates a yipping toy poodle from the alligator on the other side. The clipped lawn makes the ground even between them; it leads on the one side up to the patio and pool of a suburban house and, on the other, down to the shore of the neighborhood lake. The two confront each other through the gaps in the fence, a face off of unsure dimensions. But the poodle yips delightedly, confident of its own safety. You can almost feel its little body tense and shake with unequal measures of fear and glee. Not to be outdone, the alligator advances. In the second photograph, it is suspended with one forefoot poised in the air, apparently prepared to scale the entire height of the fence. The poodle hides its disbelief in an attitude of amused fury. Now, 7 two years later, the third picture haunts me: an alligator teetering on top of a fence, a living see-saw, clearly headed over, the fence a detail in its progress, the little dog gone. We stop for pictures. Posed together on the bench, leering boa constrictor draped around their shoulders, the boys cradle a small alligator in their communal lap. A minor disagreement breaks out over whether or not it's actually a baby. There seems to be something at stake in insisting that it's not, that it's just a smaller, probably meaner, alligator than the fat, fairly lazy-looking ones we've seen elsewhere around the park. We contemplate the plate of alligator ribs in the window of Pearl's, ride the Gatorland Express Railroad around the park, and end up at the Gator Wrestlin' amphitheater where we take seats on the stone bleachers built in a semicircle around a sand and water stage. Before he quite knows what he has done, Marc volunteers to serve as assistant for today's show. He looks so much younger when he's away from us and standing next to the "Gator Wrangler" on the sand island. The Wrangler hoists a smallish alligator onto the sand and proceeds to demonstrate to the rest of us how an alligator can be incapacitated. I'm not sure if this is meant to be practical advice. He maneuvers the alligator into several positions in order to highlight for us its finer features. He has Marc touch the alligator in places to show us where to look: the length of its tail, the expanse of its jaw, the curve its neck makes when you pull the head back. He lets the lower jaw drop down so we can see the jawline. Marc's face appears between the gaping teeth; up close the alligator is more than he expected. The Wrangler lets the huge mouth snap shut with a loud crack to give us a sense of the alligator's strength and reflexes. We respond in kind with an appreciative "ah." Early one morning an elderly woman, disoriented and lost, wanders from her home in an affluent area of the city. She walks by herself through the perfect streets, under the spreading grapefruit trees, and ends up by the scenic lake that is the perquisite of such neighborhoods in Florida. It's a sinkhole really, but nobody cares much how it 8 got there; no one remembers anymore whose house was sucked away, offered up so that the rest could enjoy property values whose graphed posture inclines with the city's growth since 1971. She is lost. At the edge of the lake, something moves. The next day, a neighbor man trimming the sweeping palms in his front yard would say he noticed her briefly, but thought nothing of it: an old woman walking by herself on another beautiful morning in Orlando. When they found what was left of her body, the city recoiled at the sight: the dismembered and partially devoured remains of one of its own. Autopsies on the five alligators they captured and immediately destroyed revealed roots and nuts in the stomachs, a subsistence diet, a sign of starvation. We have picked up a fifth, a straggler. She must have sensed we are the chief attraction here. She toddles next to me holding her Barney cup. I search for her parents, worry briefly about appearances, and welcome her in. Ahead of us is the Gator Jumparoo, a broad tank in which float with no apparent aim an indeterminate number of large alligators, 15 feet, our guidebook says, and 1000 pounds. They are very real. A man in blue polyester and a microphone walks out onto the platform in the middle of the tank. The show is just beginning. The crowd circles around the fence and waits to see jumping alligators. I'm not sure any of us quite knows what to expect. I know I doubt that alligators jump, particularly these alligators—they are so heavy—and particularly today—it is so hot. I discuss this with Chris and Bryan and the straggler who are likewise skeptical. We agree we've never seen it on TV. But our host is optimistic. The microphone disappears in one hand while the other reaches into the white bucket beside him for a plucked and scrawny chicken. He holds it aloft like a prize fish and speaks the terrors of Florida's alligators. The chicken's wings droop awkwardly in the still air. Behind me, a man hums the theme from "It's a Small World After All." The woman next to me snickers to her husband. Our collective weeks at Disney have made us callous and 9 almost surly. Below me, the children lean against the fence, their foreheads braced along one rail. We've had enough of plastic dancing bears; we want carnage. The alligators do not budge. They seem to lie atop each other in a floating heap. I look in my pamphlet where the alligator is shown almost clearing the railing in order to get at the chicken. Our alligators are lethargic and will not jump. Our host's chatter increases, I guess to distract us from the show that is not happening around him. In response, one alligator seems to flip over on its back and disappear under the water. We wait in the afternoon heat. The man in blue leans down over the railing in front of him and shakes the chicken closer to the water. This gets noticed. The alligators line up and look one way. They've done this before. Eventually, one makes a dive at the chicken which is promptly let go. The show continues for another fifteen minutes. "These alligators are spoiled," says the woman next to me. "Fat and spoiled." The kids bow their heads and watch one of the just-fed alligators float below them in the tank. They have faith that these are unspoiled alligators. One morning, late in July, Walt Disney walks across the unsure ground of Central Florida, extends his arm out over the empty lands, and speaks aloud, an oracle to lizards: "The lake goes here." Our drive home is uneventful. The boys nod off in the early evening haze. The local radio reports that scientists studying Lake Okeechobee have discerned industrial contaminants in the eggs of the lake's alligators. Personal bankruptcies are up 34%, compared to a national average of 21%. Despite what look like massive losses at its Paris theme park, the Walt Disney Co. plans to open a new historical park in Virginia. They will call it Disney's America. Along the Trail, the girls at The Doll House have assembled themselves outside for their nightly invitations to passing tourists. My parents live scarcely several miles from here in a subdivision hidden between the Trail and Orange Avenue paralleling it on the other side of town. It is a matter of a few right turns 10 for this area to disappear and become a different place. They moved here ten years ago as part of the general rush, bought a house, went native. They live by Lake Holden in Holden Estates. My parents' estate has three bedrooms and a new roof. The boys are asleep in one of them. In the kitchen, my mother is rearranging photographs in metal frames. I look to the mantle where her children are lined up by birth. I'm there in the middle where I always am. At the table, she removes from one frame the high school graduation photo of my youngest sister, the one who became engaged at Disney World. Into the empty space under the glass, my mother slips a more recent photo: Now a young mother herself, Leanne proudly displays her eleven-month old son while behind them stands his ecstatic and loving, if still slightly disbelieving father. They are a happy family, I think, without irony. Outside, my father offers me scotch and a chair. He starts saying some dad-stuff about my car, what he wants to check in the morning before I leave. He asks me how my work goes. I tell him I can't keep my metaphors straight. He says he knows I'll work it out. He's so thrilled to have a daughter who drinks scotch with him that he believes I can do anything. It's just a very typical night. We watch the lake. Splayed out like this month's girl, it meets our gaze with cool detachment. We are almost nothing to it, the people who live on the orange groves it used to nourish. Above it, two helicopters flash their spotlights over its smooth surface. The Orlando Police are searching for something. Perhaps someone from the dangerous classes has decided to turn bad. Perhaps an alligator, starving in a land of plenty, has spotted another poodle on the patio. We watch as the lights probe the surface, but cannot get beneath. Notes 1. Fjellman, 139. All of the statistics in this essay are from Fjellman and U.S. Census reports. 11