Gator Hater!
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"Gator Hater!" is the second episode of The Residents' crime fiction serial drama The River of Crime!, originally released on the Cordless Recordings website on June 27th, 2006. This episode featured the first appearance of voice actress Gerri Lawlor in a Residents project. Lawlor went on to work with The Residents on nearly all of their subsequent projects, up until her death in 2019.
An RMX version of the song "Blue Tongues" from Our Finest Flowers was included as a bonus track in the original download.
Script
INTRO
Our lives are constantly surrounded by unseen streams... numerous, invisible rivers composed of love, power, success, pain... all that we detest and desire. Some we navigate with ease, some we seek forever... and some are simply whirlpools, spinning us into oblivion. While I am not a criminal, crime has stalked me from an early age. At this point, I can only see my life as an unending collision with evil, leaving me with but one conclusion: I ride the river of crime.
INTRODUCTION TO EPISODE #2 - IT AIN'T NO RAT
(Typical street noises are heard; most prominent are the voices of several teenage boys and a pronounced scraping sound.) [VINCE] Hey Eddie! Let's dump this snow down that manhole! I'm tired of shoveling this crap. [EDDIE] Yeah... okay, me too... I gotta go home, anyway. OVER HERE, GUYS! DUMP IT DOWN THIS MANHOLE! (The scraping sound gets louder, accompanied by the boys' voices.) [EDDIE] Shit... it's cold! [VINCE] I'm beat! [EDDIE] Let's get outta here. (A noise is heard.) [EDDIE] Hey look! Something's moving! There's something down there! [VINCE] It's just a rat... goddamn sewer is full of 'em. [EDDIE] SHIT, IT AIN'T NO GODDAMN RAT! IT'S BIG! ...IT ...IT'S HUGE! SHEEEEITTT! VINCE... GRAB THAT ROPE, I THINK I CAN GET IT AROUND HIS HEAD! ...I GOT IT! I GOT IT! GUYS, HELP!! HELP ME PULL IT UP!!! (Sounds of exertion, excited grunts and shuffling feet are heard.) [VINCE] JEEEEEZUSSSS!!! LOOK AT THAT THING! IT... IT'S TRYING TO OPEN ITS MOUTH!!! LOOK AT THEM GODDAMN TEETH... KILL IT!! KILL! QUICK... KILL THAT SUCKER!! (The sounds of snow shovels hitting something hard is heard repeatedly over and over, along with several voices all screaming.) [EDDIE & VINCE] KILL IT! KILL IT QUICK! KILL IT!!! [CHORUS] Kill that sucker, kill it dead Whack him on his ugly head
OPENING
[NARRATOR] According to the New York Times, Feb 10, 1935, three teenagers were shoveling snow into an open manhole when they found themselves staring into the open mouth of an alligator. After looping a rope around its head, they bludgeoned it with snow shovels, then proudly dragged their trophy to a stove repair shop a couple of blocks away. Nobody ever figured out how a tropical animal made it into the sewers of New York in the middle of the winter, but it did become the foundation for one of America's best-loved urban legends: the cute baby alligators brought home from Florida that were ultimately flushed down toilets and into the sewers of the Big Apple. [CHORUS] Sucked down the sewers Just like manure Sucked down the sewers in the Big Bad Apple [NARRATOR] Now the crime in this story is not the killing of a small and undoubtedly bewildered alligator, although it was a criminal act as far as I'm concerned... no, there's little doubt that the real crime is murder... but then, no one knows for sure.
SCENE 1 - THE GATOR IN THE DUCK POND
[NARRATOR] My story starts many years later. I was ten years old... and very interested in similar rumors about a small alligator, supposedly swimming around a local pond.
(The phone rings. A ten-year-old boy picks it up.) [YOUNG NARRATOR] Hello. Oh, hi Tommy. What's up? ...what? WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDIN' ME? REALLY? WOW! WHERE?... YEAH, YEAH, OKAY, I'LL GET MY BIKE AND COME ON OVER... Yeah, see you in a couple of minutes! (he hangs up) MOM! MOM! I gotta go. Tommy called and said there's this alligator over by the golf course... [MOTHER] NOOOOOO!!!! NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! YOU ARE NOT GOING OVER THERE!!! NO! [YOUNG NARRATOR] BUT, MOM... [MOTHER] NO! DID YOU HEAR ME?? NO! YOU'RE NOT GOING!! [YOUNG NARRATOR] BUT... [MOTHER] NO! NO! NO! DID YOU HEAR ME?? NO! GO TO YOUR ROOM! (A door slams.)
[CHORUS] Twinkle, twinkle, little beast; How we wonder if you'll feast upon our organs and our glands or just eat babies when you can
[NARRATOR] Well... my mom's harsh response really caught me off guard, but, what the hell, I reacted like any normal ten-year-old boy. I went to my room, climbed out the window and went to see the goddamn alligator.
SCENE 2 - THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE
[CHORUS] Perhaps it could have been a log or a floating and dead dog. [NARRATOR] You know... one of the things we learn in life is that the most fun is usually free from expectation. Without the burden of anticipation, the things that just happen are always the best -- while on the other end of life's emotional barometer are anything that's "FREE!," New Year's Eve, and, of course, the gator at the duck pond. [CHORUS] Is there any worse surprise than a mother's angry eyes? [NARRATOR] But much worse was the fact that, as dozens of kids stood around an ugly brown pond staring at a pile of lumps, I looked up and saw my mom. This was big-time bad.
SCENE 3 - FREAKOUT IN THE FAMILY ROOM
[MOTHER] HOW DARE YOU!! HOW DARE YOU DO THAT!! ...WHEN I STRICTLY TOLD YOU NOT TO GO!!! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?? [YOUNG NARRATOR] But, Mom... [MOTHER] NO EXCUSES!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?? NO TV!! NO FOOTBALL PRACTICE! NO FRIENDS AFTER SCHOOL! NOTHING!! YOU HEAR?? NOTHING! FOR SIX MONTHS! NOTHING!! NOTHING!! [YOUNG NARRATOR] But, Mom... [MOTHER] GO TO YOUR ROOM! AND THIS TIME YOU STAY THERE!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?? [YOUNG NARRATOR] Yes ma'am... did you think I would get eaten by a two foot long alligator? (The mother suddenly bursts into labored sobbing.) [YOUNG NARRATOR] Mom, are you okay? Mom, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... please stop, Mom, I'm sorry...
[NARRATOR] Confused and shaken, I hugged my mother, saying that I was sorry, and begged for her forgiveness, even though I still wasn't sure what I had done. Soon she pulled herself together enough to tell me that it wasn't my fault... she said that long ago, during her freshman year in college, she had a best friend - her name was Wanda Sue Judkins.
SCENE 4 - WANDA SUE
[MOTHER] Wanda Sue and I were such great pals. We laughed... cried... talked about boys... we practically did everything together. But then her mother got sick... she was from Texas, a little town called Elmendorf, not too far from San Antonio... well, she had to go home in the middle of the semester to take care of her mother, but we stayed in touch... [CHORUS] She put herself aside and tried to help her mother, but she died and left her all alone inside of nothingness - I guess she cried.
[NARRATOR] Mom said that her roommate had gotten a job as a waitress in... Elmendorf, but, unfortunately, her mother's illness turned out to be fatal, leaving Wanda Sue without a family, but the young girl said she was saving money and would be returning to college the following year.
[MOTHER] ... as the school year progressed, we made plans to see each other. I was going to take a bus and stay with her over the Easter holidays... but she never answered my last two letters, leaving our plans unconfirmed. I tried to call,but never got an answer. I was so worried... so I finally just decided to go anyway. ...I can still remember reading her last letter on the bus...
[WANDA SUE] Dear Eurlene, I guess I'm lucky to have a job, but things are a little strange here. My boss is a man named Joe Ball. He's nice enough, I guess. Maybe a little too nice sometimes, if you know what I mean, but it's the way he runs his business that I don't like. The restaurant and bar are okay, but the big attraction is the alligators. Joe dug this pond back behind the place and filled it up with alligators. And every Saturday night he feeds them. Last week it was a raccoon and a calf, and the week before that it was a couple of cocker spaniels and a baby pig. And they were alive when he threw them in there. [CHORUS] He found a sheepdog at the pound and with its legs securely bound he lowered it into a pit where snapping jaws awaited it. [WANDA SUE] It just gives me the creeps. After that I felt weird every time he touched me... and he touches me a lot. I guess I should get another job, but there's not much work around here... [CHORUS] He touched her every single day in a subtle sickly way; Even in her dreams he creeped invasively into her sleep.
SCENE 5 - OUTSIDE OF A BAR IN ELMENDORF, TEXAS
[NARRATOR] Given the ultimate circumstances of this sordid scene, the timing of my mother's arrival at the Sociable Inn in Elmendorf was... well, not good. The bar was surrounded by cop cars with more arriving, when the bus dropped her off a hundred yards or so from Joe Ball's dirt parking lot. [CHORUS] The sound of sirens filled her head with a sucking sound instead of open arms and smiling eyes; There is a smell when someone dies.
[MOTHER] Anybody could tell that something was wrong... bad wrong. I ran into the bar and practically knocked over this deputy sheriff... he had the strangest look on his face when I asked him where I could find Joe Ball. I remember it like it was yesterday...
[DEPUTY SHERIFF] ... Ma'am, Joe Ball done shot hisself to death... right in front of me. It was the damdest thing I ever saw. He did it right behind that bar over there... pulled out a pistol and just shot hisself right in the head... we couldn't do a goddamn thing... we was just about to arrest him on murder charges, and he just up and kills hisself! ...well, that sure as shit says somethin' to me... uh, pardon my French, ma'am... but it seems like several of Joe's waitresses done disappeared... and everybody around here knows about how he feeds them gators...
EPILOGUE
[NARRATOR] Joe Ball's alligators, of course, survived, and it wasn't long before they became the main attraction at the San Antonio zoo... but Wanda Sue Judkins, my mom's best friend, disappeared without a trace.
See also
Listen online
Resources
- "Gator Hater!" script (PDF file, 36 KB)