Contributor:
Dr. Percy Thomas-Douglas, PhD. – Ecologist, Never a finer man has ever lived! Lives in Canberra, AU.
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16 July 2009, 6:00 a.m.
“So, what if your sense of
common sense is pretty messed up?” asked my uncle, Ed. “What do you do then?”
Auntie LeTigre and Uncle Ed were visiting Australia from the US and we were staying at a beach house in Northeastern Queensland, near a town called Port Douglas, which has close access via boat to the Great Barrier Reef.
I looked up from my dinner plate while the conversation was temporarily halted by Uncle Ed’s question. We had been recounting the adventures that my Dad, little brother, Uncle Ed, and myself had had that afternoon while my Auntie LeTigre and my Mom stayed back at the beach house and later had lunch in Port Douglas.
Common sense…I have noticed that my Uncle Ed has a rather particular way of reasoning things out. I asked him, “When you say
pretty messed up, is that like when you say that
the worm has turned?”
“The worm has turned…what does that mean?” asked my Mom.
To which my Auntie LeTigre replied, “Is Uncle Eddie saying that the worn has turned again?”
“I can’t believe that you guys haven’t heard that saying before – you know,
the worm has turned,” exclaimed Uncle Ed.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” continued my Mom.
Auntie LeTigre replied, “Eddie thinks that’s an old saying. But
he made it up.
The worm has turned doesn’t make any sense. Don’t listen to anything he has to say.”
“It means that if things aren’t going in your favor, and then something changes your luck (or vice versa) you say:
the worm has turned. And I know that I didn’t make it up…it’s been around for years,” Uncle Ed defended himself.
“Do you know what else Uncle Ed told me,” I explained to the family, “He said that in America they call the knee a
Leg-Elbow?”
“Leg-elbow? What is that?” my Mom laughed.
“It’s an American thing. We say,
Ouch, I stubbed my leg-elbow, or,
I was up to my leg-elbows in cats,” Uncle Ed replied. “It’s a local saying - - in America.”
Uncle Ed then proceeded to chant: U-S-A! U-S-A! RED-WHITE-BLUE! RED-WHITE-BLUE!
As an aside, earlier that week, the first thing Uncle Ed had asked me upon his arrival to Australia with my Auntie LeTigre was, “Do you guys have The Fourth of July down here?”
To which I replied, “No. I mean, yes. But it’s not like it is in the States. It’s just a regular day here.”
We were at the Sydney airport, awaiting our flight to the northern part of Queensland and the beach house we had rented for a week near Port Douglas – and it was July 4th – and Uncle Ed was in full patriot mode. However, I pointed out to him that in America, it was still yet the third of July due to the time change.
“That damn, crazy International Dateline,” mumbled my uncle as he then began to robustly chant: U-S-A! U-S-A! RED-WHITE-BLUE! RED-WHITE-BLUE!
Back at the dinner table, we debated the legitimacy of Uncle Ed’s warped sayings. I looked out the windows of the house and toward the beach. The winter sun was setting, and as the light of the day faded, stars were emerging from the deepening Prussian-blue skies hanging just above the ocean’s horizon.
Uncle Ed posed a question to my Mom and Auntie LeTigre, “So, while we were gone today, were there any more Peach on the beach sightings?”
“Pink,” said my Mom.
“Oh right, I keep getting that mixed up. Any more
Pink sightings today?” asked Uncle Ed.
“No, we think that she may have moved on,” replied Auntie LeTigre. “We saw her on the beach earlier this morning, but it’s been pretty quiet over there the whole afternoon.”
The singer, Pink, and her entourage had been staying in a house a few doors down the beach. We all thought that it was pretty exciting to have a celebrity in the neighborhood.
“I guess Bill and Hillary stayed on this beach too; in one of these houses, when they were here,” added my Mom. “We were in Port Douglas today having lunch at the same restaurant they ate at back in 2001.”
Auntie LeTigre said, “Bill signed a big dinner plate that the restaurant now has framed and hanging on the wall. It’s kind of strange, the plate read:
Bill Clinton, Sept. 11, 2001.”
“That’s right,” replied my dad, “They were here that day.”
“That is kind-a strange,” Uncle Ed said.
“However, it would have been the tenth back in America when it was the 11th here,” I added.
Uncle Ed looked at me while squinting through his eyelids and gritting his teeth as he tried to figure out the time changes between the US and Australian longitudes. My Dad then continued his story of what he, Uncle Ed, my little brother, and I had done that day while my aunt and Mom were on beach-celebrity-look-out.
“We saw a ton of Gators!” exclaimed Uncle Ed.
“
Crocs, Edmund. Crocodiles. We have saltwater and freshwater crocodiles in this part of Australia,” replied my Dad.
“Oh, right. I keep getting that mixed up,” said Uncle Ed.
“The crocodile lagoon was awesome,” I said. “There were crocs everywhere!”
“In this one pond, there were so many gators, I mean crocs, that it looked like you could run across their backs to get to the opposite shore!” Uncle Ed said.
“Yes,” my Dad said. “And did you know, that during the gestation of a crocodile egg, the sex of the baby crocodile is determined by the temperature of its nesting environment?”
“Yeah,” said Uncle Ed, “The sexuality of a baby croc is determined by variations in a couple degrees centigrade during gestation! Isn’t that amazing?! They have no Y chromosome or something crazy like that.”
“Not
sexuality, Uncle Ed,” I explained, “Sex…as in Gender: Male/Female. The temperature of the gestating egg determines whether the baby croc will be male or female.”
Uncle Ed raised his right hand to signal silence. And with eyes closed, he lowered his head and slowly shook it from side to side as his lips readied themselves to proffer the word No as a response to my statement. However, just before he made the slightest of
Nnnn sounds, his eyes popped wide open and his pupils darted quickly around the dinner table while the rest on his face held a blank, dumbfounded expression.
“At any rate,” my Dad said, “we took a boat tour through some wetlands where we met Big Ted.”
“Big Ted is 5 and a half meters long!” I said.
“That’s like 17 or 18 feet!” Uncle Ed said.
“A crocodile that’s 18 feet long?!” asked my Auntie LeTigre. “Dang!”
“Dang!” Everyone at the table repeated in unison.
“And Big Ted is relatively small compared to the twenty-eight foot crocodile they recently caught in the Northern Territory,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Uncle Ed, “and the guy driving the boat through the swamp told us that Big Ted could easily overturn the tour boat we were in – if he wanted too – he was that strong and ornery.”
“And Big Ted wasn’t that happy to see us. He swam right alongside the boat and then under the boat for a while and then he batted a smaller crocodile with his tail and she flew about a meter out of the water,” I said.
My Dad then added, “There were crocs all over the place: on the land; in the water; near the boat; under the boat. The boat pilot/park ranger was very excited - - exclaiming that Big Ted doesn’t normally come out into the water and up to the boats.”
“He’s the Alpha male crocodile,” said Uncle Ed.
I added, “Big Ted likes to make it known that he’s the boss. The park ranger said that once, Big Ted broadsided the boat, shifting it two meters toward the shore.”
Uncle Ed then said, “I looked on from my seat near the front of the boat as the park ranger was getting extremely excited about seeing Big Ted. The guy kept maneuvering the boat to get a better view of beast. What I saw was Big Ted and about 35 people in a smallish-sized boat. Then I noticed that our captain, or rather, the park ranger, was kind of young looking; real young looking actually, and there were no visible lifejackets or life rafts on board. And the kid kept repeating, over and over, how easy it would be for Big Ted to flip the boat; all this as he maniacally backed up, turned right, and then starboard, or whatever, and then to the portside, all the while keeping the boat as close to Big Ted as possible!”
My Dad then said, “There were smaller crocs in the water all around the boat too.”
Uncle Ed continued, “Then the nearly post-pubescent park ranger says to us, ‘When dealing with crocs, you just have to use common sense.’ I thought to myself,
Common Sense? One might argue that using common sense while taking a bunch of people out into croc-infested waters might dissuade oneself from using the 20 foot boat to harass the 18 foot Big Ted; a monster, mind you, that is also the only thing in the immediate area that is higher on the food chain than all the screaming people in the boat put together!
“And wouldn’t common sense also dictate that a bunch of guns must also be brought along on any swamp/croc tours too?” exclaimed Uncle Ed.
“I saw no guns on that boat, not even a flair gun. Not even the toy gun that the baby-faced park ranger probably used to dress up as the Lone Ranger for last year’s Halloween. What I did see however, was the cherubic park ranger, totally unarmed, using a boatful of people to buzz the largest known monster-crocodile in the area - - Big, Big Ted, who according to Junior was over 90 years old, and crotchety as all getup,” said Uncle Ed as his eyes became more and more wild looking.
Then my Dad said, “Yes, but who is the greater fool? Is it (A) the man who takes a boatload of 35 people out into croc-infested swamps with no lifejackets and no guns, and who then uses said boat to repeatedly taunt the biggest monster croc known for 500 kilometers…or is it (B) the one who places
his life into
that man-child’s hands?”
I then said, “And besides, we don’t have Halloween in Australia.”
“What? No Halloween?
“And no Fourth of July? You’re kidding me.
“Those are two of the best holidays we have! Especially Halloween!” replied Uncle Ed.
Turning back to the rest of the table, he went on to say, “All I know is that when the man-child was talking about using
common sense, I was thinking back to the sign at the entrance to the park that read how the management wouldn’t be held responsible for any quote/unquote:
accidents. I should have seen the word
accidents, and then I should have used my common sense to think:
guns, I need guns.”
“Well, in Australia, much like the USA, you cannot sign away liability, nor can people be absolved of responsibility by hanging a warning sign at the entrance of a Crocodile Park,” my Dad said.
“Guns are what matter when a pissed-off Big Ted is chomping on a boatload of innocent people who unwittingly placed their fate into the hands of a teenage-man-child-park-ranger whose never learned the difference between fantasy and reality because the kid never got to dress up for Halloween!” exclaimed Uncle Ed.
I replied, “Maybe it’s like when we went snorkeling at the reef the other day. They had us wear Lycra bodysuits to protect us from jellyfish, while telling us that no jellyfish were in the area at this time of the year. Then they said to watch out for White- and/or Black-Tipped Reef Sharks, Bronze Whaler Sharks, Hammerheads, and Sting Rays; AND then they said to jump into the water and have fun!”
“Hey! That
is really messed up too! Why didn’t you mention that when we were jumping off the boat at the reef and into our watery graves?” asked Uncle Ed. “Common sense would have held that they should have given us underwater guns for protection!”
“I didn’t bring it up because nothing happened to us - - we weren’t in any actual danger,” I replied in my defense.
“By the way, speaking of danger,” my Mom said, “one of the palm trees in front of the beach house dropped another coconut today.”
“How many is that since we arrived?” asked Auntie LeTigre.
“I think that makes five coconuts total,” I said.
Uncle Ed leaned back into his chair and said, “It’s funny how the owners of this place hung a hammock right between two of those crazy palm trees that are filled with massive coconuts waiting to drop down - - and take someone’s head off.
“Saltwater crocs in the water; killer palm trees in the sky; traps everywhere; jellyfish, sharks, Sting Rays; in addition to snakes, spiders, and all sorts of lizards and reptiles; Bill Clinton here on 9/11; Pink; it’s tropical paradise mixed with hell on Earth - - the ultimate
turning of the worm!!” exclaimed Uncle Ed.
To which my Dad replied, “You know what they say about Queensland:
Beautiful one day, and perfect the next.” – PTD
Killer palm trees!
Hammock of Death
Beach
Sign on beach.
Shark-free waters? Doom lurks behind every bit of coral at the Great Barrier Reef!
Who can tame this wild land?
