Negotiations In The Absurd: Gunny And The Gator

By Bob Newman

One day long ago, back in the mythical ‘60s in fact, a skinny kid living in almost-rural South Florida took his dad’s tackle box to the overgrown canal down NW 17^th Court in what was then the new subdivision of Sunrise Golf Village (now the city of Sunrise) and commenced gator angling. He had not intended to fish for gators, figuring the usual bass, bream and catfish would suffice, but when he and his pal Jeff Browning got to the canal, there, on the far bank, slept a large alligator.

Within casting range.

The duo targeted the hapless water lizard with every lure in the tackle box, all of which, of course, stuck into the gator’s tough hide, requiring the line to be broken each time and a new lure to be hurled at the creature. Soon the beast was festooned with dozens of Rapalas, Jitterbugs, plastic worms, Creek Chubs and other aquatic offerings. Finally, the tackle box was void of lures and the boys knew Mr. Newman was going to be graphically displeased.

The solution was obvious: have Mr. Mueller, whose yard we were in, call the game warden to get the lures back.

Mr. Newman had just hopped out of his VW van when he saw the game warden’s pickup drive by, heading for the canal. He looked around and noticed his son was not about. Putting it together, he quickly knew the game warden being in our neighborhood had to have something to do with his lunatic kid.

He walked down to the canal to find the game warden and his beautiful young, blonde wife paddling a johnboat across the canal toward a gator. Sure enough, there was 8-year-old Bob encouraging the intrepid couple to approach the gator slowly and quietly so as not to frighten the lure-clad reptile into the water, where it would surely submerge and flee with all of his father’s lures thereupon.

The tiny boat nudged ashore and the gator did as expected: it bolted for the water. But the warden and his wife were ready and they bailed out of the boat and onto their quarry, which also as expected attempted to eat them with impressive gusto.

The fight was on.

Remarkably, the humans bested the alligator, tied it up and gently placed it in the boat, and back across the canal they came. The gator was then placed in the truck. Jeff and Bob yanked all the lures out of the thing’s hide and put them back into the tackle box, which pleased Bob’s speechless father. The gator was then taken to the Everglades and set free.

The game warden and his wife did not attempt to talk the gator into the boat and coming along quietly. They did not attempt to bribe it with a fish, frog or turtle. They did not ask the entire neighborhood what they should do. They knew what the alligator was like—understood its nature—and knew what had to be done to accomplish their mission. After all, an alligator is an alligator.

And a terrorist is a terrorist.

Each time I read or hear about the debacle the civilized world has with a wannabe-nuclear Iran, I think of that gator and its nature. Iran’s government is the world’s largest terrorist regime. Iran was behind the terrorist attacks against U.S. forces and State Department facilities in the 1980s, resulting in hundreds of Americans killed. This means a state of war has existed between America and Iran since then, although we haven’t been fighting it in an effective manner. We have hardly been fighting it at all.

And now the maniacal Islamofascists running the world’s most dangerous terrorist state are working toward the nuclear.

The president of Iran says Israel should be wiped off the map and that America is still the “great Satan.”

And yet here we are, still trying to convince the gator to behave.

Bob Newman

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Bob Newman, a decorated, retired US Marine, is host of the “Gunny Bob Show” on Newsradio 850 KOA in Denver. A ground-combat veteran, he is the director of international security & counterterrorism services for The GeoScope Group. He can be reached at bobnewman@clearchannel.com.