By Nellie Curtiss …
The moon bustled about the barren cottonwoods, but it was a full moon and could hardly hide in between the skinny trunk bark anymore.
Its light reverberated across the street, onto the broken sidewalks, to the very tippy top of the metal bus barn and down onto the asphalt parking lot, and the nary-a-blade-of-grass yard where critters chomped at their bits for a morsel, a tiny taste of gingerbread, candied yams, roasted corn on swelling rump or holiday cheer in an open tin can.
Across the winding road, the non-denominational church spires soaked in the midnight rays, too, as the deacons unloaded nominated singers, podcasters and handy hints of marshmallows and chocolate for the festive inbetweeners.
The congregation, a group of crocodiles with their chilled armor rested just outside the village edge where they collected wits and washers. No one inbetweener saw the fifteen-footer bellow and toss a rooting racoon into the soggy underbrush.
“Reptiles are reptiles,” the narrator of the Saturday Sundance once said as she discovered just such a tossed tail.
Evelyn in a whisper not heard in the fray, mumbled, “It got too close to Fred.”
By now the other reptiles had smoothed out the keratin scales and dropped out crocodile pitches and drumbeats for the tail whipping congregants belying any known logic to their actions and intentions. Crocodiles didn’t live on the prairie; but here they were—a whole slew of them.
The cooks and bakers at the village diners were busy pinching pie crusts, basting poultry breasts, and fingering fried fritters to hear the thud and flood of a mass presentation onto the westward ho highway. The crocodile congregation was maneuvering on the fly.
No inbetweeners heard the swishing sounds of reptile crusty leather on asphalt as Fred and his cohorts inundated the bus barn yard. Curious critters scattered in the bustle and watched from a safe distance, as the reptiles tore through bay doors onto slickened floors.
A mechanic napping between timing belt installations managed to crawl away onto the steel rafters, away from the torc jaws of these many congregants. Having slipped her tool belt off, Mary used her wits to secure the belt like a safety cord to her and the steel rails so that she had leverage to stay above the fray.
The mass of crocodiles were looking for answers without any questions. They seemed to have eaten someone else’s worms or diatribes.
In desperation, Jo, the tool inspector at the bus barn, began to count the crocodile congregants.
“Hmm,” she mumbled to Mary, “I count twenty.”
Jo raised her iPhone 13 and texted some inbetweeners on the next block. “HELP. 20 crocodiles are invading the bus barn.”
Not since the 1984 movie The Gremlins had there been so much wild terror in a metal building, but Jo, and Mary were determined to squelch the rambunctious ancient aristocrats. Jo acted as a decoy, and Mary the punisher. Evelyn kept calm and carried on.
Mary climbed down a ladder and banged on the metal with a crowbar. Fred, the lead crocodile, noticed and skated over to grumble. Mary darted upward. Jo climbed. Then crocodile teeth dug into Jo’s denim jeans, however, she managed to shove back against the blithering snoot. The jeans tore. The croc fell onto the cement.
The inbetweeners arrived and were unionizing in the rafters with forks, drone raptors, and plywood planks. Across the barn, other mouthy crocodiles began to climb and fall, climb and fall, climb and fall.
After a night’s fracas, the inbetweeners stopped to count the cock-eyed crocodiles. A budding sleuth heard from a wrangled croc that these congregants had all followed Fred from Gulf of Mexico waters into the mouth of the Rio Grande having escaped ocean currents and hoping to find a simple primordial holler to live out time. Instead, the beasts found the river dry, the prairie a desert and inbetweeners armed with forks.
Full moon or not, counting crocs B-lining for prime real estate can be risky business when inbetweeners mix it up with forks, drones, and plywood.
— Nelda Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at http://www.columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com
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