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Doug Clark: Alligator on the lam could be just what Spokane Valley needs
As everybody by now knows, a 3-foot pet alligator went missing in the city of Spokane Valley (aka Greater Millwood).
First thought: The city leaders finally came up with a way to put Spokane Valley on the map.
Spokane Valley has struggled with an identity crisis ever since 2003, when a majority of residents were hoodwinked into voting for incorporation, thinking they’d save a lot of money.
As if adding government ever saved anyone a dime.
Trouble soon set in when several search parties were lost trying to locate a Valley city center, which is crucial to any real burg.
More recently Spokane Valley tried packing its City Council with bickering nincompoops, but that only drove more people away.
But this alligator on the loose saga?
This could be the ticket, as in …
- “Name the Valley Alli – Win a New Car” contest.
- “See-ya-later Valley Alligator Festival!”
- Meet the Gator Day at the Spokane Valley Mall.
I’m telling you, this could turn into something huge like Bigfoot or when a frightening percentage of the American populace actually believed that Elvis still walked the Earth.
To recap this tale, the alligator was reportedly seen lounging in a backyard water area at University Mobile Home Park. The critter was suspected of being a guest of one of the residents.
When animal control officers showed up to investigate, however, the gator was gone like Gandhi.
The supposed owner played dumb. A photo was produced.
Was it real? Was it a myth?
This is the sort of scandal a city booster would sell his invalid mother for.
The reptilian disappearance produced a predictable frenzy of journalistic grist far and wide.
It even kicked up another notch Friday when a second gator, this one a 4-footer, was found to be living in a home in northeast Spokane County.
An alligator on the lam is not only unusual, but apparently harboring one is illegal in Spokane County.
Which brings me to my second thought:
I grew up in a much simpler age.
I know. That sounds like a really Old Guy thing to say, but in this case it’s true. I came of age in a time when any kid could just wander into a Spokane pet store and purchase an alligator for a friend.
Which is exactly what I did to celebrate my best pal’s 16th birthday.
“I walk up to my front door and there’s a box on the porch with a note on it that says, ‘Hello, my name is Ralph,’ ” recalls Dave Bond.
Thus began a relationship that can only be described as rocky.
Dave was a fine alligator owner. He set up a large plastic boat in his room. He filled it partially with water and added a sun lamp to keep Ralph warm.
He kept his gator well fed on a diet of live goldfish and pork kidneys.
In the beginning Ralph was maybe 18 inches long and quite manageable.
When the Bonds went off to Canada for a summer vacation, I got stuck with feeding Ralph and Pedro, the family’s sweet-tempered black Lab.
Try as I might to make friends, Ralph would only stare at me with cold, dead eyes. Or snap his toothy jaws if my fingers got too close.
Flash forward two years and many goldfish and kidneys later. Dave and I graduated from Ferris High School. Ralph was now easily a foot longer, thicker and heavier and several degrees surlier.
“He could bite a pencil in half,” Dave says with a degree of pride.
At first my friend did the sensible thing.
He left Ralph with his parents. This was the same scam my kids pulled when they exited the homestead and left dear old Dad to tend their dog and cats.
The Bonds, however, were political people and Spokane Club members. They were not the sort of folks who thought of themselves as alligator wranglers.
So they got even with their son on parents weekend at Salem, Oregon’s prestigious Willamette University.
Along with their love they brought Ralph, the boat and the sunlamp and dumped all three off at Dave’s frat house.
Ralph was now pledged to Phi Delta Theta.
The members took an immediate liking to their newest recruit.
One of the brainier types even fed him live mice smuggled from the science lab, Dave says.
And life went on, for a time.
Then things unraveled one day when some fool left Dave’s bedroom door ajar. Ralph, who was by now large enough to abandon ship whenever he felt like it, scuttled out the door and down the stairs …
To where the housemother was doing her cleaning.
It’s unknown how many laps Ralph chased the frightened woman around the dining room table. But Dave swears that when he walked through the front door back from classes, the poor house mom was standing on the tabletop with his pet glaring up at her from the floor.
“It was the only time I ever got to meet the dean of students,” says Dave, with a touch of melancholy.
The verdict was swift: Ralph must go.
So back to Spokane they went, where Dave gave Ralph to a pet emporium on Division Street.
For a while he kept tabs on Ralph’s growth and progress. Then time took over and the alligator was largely forgotten.
Until this hubbub in the Valley stirred up old memories between old friends.
Dave has always been a dreamer and an optimist. He’d like to think that this renegade gator just might be his old buddy.
Alligators are known for living a long time, he argues.
I think that’s ridiculous. But I know my pal well. He’ll continue to hold out hope as he says with a sigh, “I’d like to think Ralph was just too mean to die.”
Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.