Glueygators vs. the Governator

The naked elf worked into the wee hours of the morning gluing together the pieces of felt and ribbon laid out the night before by the poor, tired art teacher. The elf added olive green spangles for eyes, beads for nostrils, and strapped each felt alligator to a glue stick like a fat Hells Angel on a Harley. The elf knew the children would be happy to see the Glueygators at their winter holiday school party, and he whistled "Born To Be Wild" while he worked. The elf never suspected that come morning he would not receive the customary suit of teeny-tiny tie-dyed clothes created by the grateful art teacher. Neither did he guess he would be the breakfast for Stephan Pastis' Zeeba Zeeba Eata fraternity members.



Inspiration is a crockpot, I always say. You chop up everything, throw it in the pot, add liquid, and let it simmer until needed--years if necessary. As long as it is still slow-cooking, you don't have to wash the dishes.

Weeding out boxes in my closet, I found a bonanza of elfin green felt. Then NPR had a segment about Schwarzenegger, aka the Governator, going enviro-friendly green. I had visions of Arnold morphing into Lou Ferrigno, (The Incredible Hulk), who just celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday in November. For heaven's sake, a new Hulk movie will be released in 2008, with a cryogenically frozen Bill Bixby!

Pearls Before Swine doesn't always pump me up when I read the daily newspaper comics at 6:30 a.m. I'm about as fond of Rat and Pig as I am of having bitewing x-rays taken at the dentist. Stephan Pastis' clueless crocodiles* are the strip's best characters. I doubt his Fraternity of Crocodiles inspire all that many perky, G-rated Christmas craft projects. If you know anyone crocheting a sequined zebra toilet paper cover, please let me know!

Nature Girl isn't Carl Hiaasen's best, but it does have some gator-wrestling. It doesn't have my favorite character, Skink, the former governor of Florida living on roadkill. Still, it was nice, light reading over Thanksgiving.

*Proud members of Zeeba Zeeba Eata, a fraternity dedicated to the destruction of Zebra and other prey, the crocodiles are Zebra’s next-door neighbors. Stupid, slow and barely articulate, these particular crocodiles are a disgrace to their species.

And that, my slow-cooked friends, is how the Glueygators were born.