Gators, Ards two of a kind

Did you see that photograph on the front page of the Morning Blues? The patrons at the Café Ridiculous at Sandy Bay couldn’t decide whether it was Greeleyville’s beauty contest or a mess of buzzard’s guts. The awful truth is, it was a picture of Andy Ard and Mike Huggins grinning like a mule eating barbed wire and a 12-foot, 6-inch, 585-pound alligator looking like it could use a Goody’s powder.

You have to have a license to shoot doves, deer, quail, catch a fish or kill an alligator. In Dillon, you have to have a license to belch. In Greeleyville, you have to have a license to vote Republican.

Alligators and Ards are not members of a mutual admiration society. A gator’s favorite dish is an Ard cooked with Vienna sausage and whipped cream. An Ard’s favorite dish is a gator’s pully bone marinated in Aqua Velva with a tossed salad on the side.

Alligators are discriminated against. You have to buy a license to shoot a gator. All you need to shoot an Ard is a gun. Alligators have established the NAAA, which stands for the National Association of Aggravated Alligators.

Pamplico Mayor Gene Gainey says he is sick and tired of gators crawling out of Jeffries Creek coming to Pamplico looking for Ards. He’s been trying to get the IGA to sell Table Rite Ard Nuggets, but the gators don’t have food stamps. This in un-American. We are the world’s richest country, but gators have to eat Ards because they don’t qualify for food stamps.

Ards are like pennies; you can find them in every parking lot in the Pee Dee. Many of our beloved readers may wonder why Andy and Mike didn’t invite LaVerne along on their safari. It is because he has so much USDA choice meat on his bones. Ards are a peculiar species. They keep wharf rats for pets and hunt alligators for a hobby. The reason LaVerne didn’t go hunting with Andy and Mike is elementary.

You are familiar with the taste of fresh tomatoes off the vine. When Ards reach a certain age, they are tender, tasty and calorie-free. When you reach LaVerne’s age, you taste like a chocolate-covered cherry to a gator, and LaVerne doesn’t want his obituary to read: “The dearly departed was an hors d’oeuvre for a gator.” A ripe Ard is a delicacy to a gator. There’s a matter of opinion as to what a ripe Ard smells like: a room full of roses or a pot full of boiling chittlings. To a gator, an Ard is a red velvet cake and Williamsburg County barbecue.

At Thanksgiving, gators like an Ard served with cranberry sauce. I have no idea why an Ard is a gator’s favorite dish any more than I can tell you why preachers love the gospel bird. Maybe a gator in Black River ate one of Ole Scrap Iron’s biscuits and ate an Ard to get rid of the taste. Peggy’s biscuits are like the wildwood flower: it’s better to sniff one than gobble one up.

I don’t know why Andy and Mike didn’t take LaVerne’s wharf rat. With its 12 ounces of fur and fury, it would have turned that 585-pound gator into a closet full of shoes and handbags. That rat is meaner than a rattlesnake with a kidney stone, but it loves LaVerne and Martha. When LaVerne takes a bath, that wharf rat washes LaVerne’s back.

— Charlie Walker is a local newspaper columnist. He can be reached at P.O. Box 441, Kingstree, SC 29556.