weeding high

Like an untended garden, my inlet of the laguna is starting to suffer a weed invasion.

Late yesterday afternoon, I decided it was time to take my weeding hook from its repose on its plastic throne and put it to work.

The tool is simple.  About 50 feet of rope attached to several pieces of rebar welded int a grappling hook.  The type of manly tool you would find on a low-budget pirate ship.

The weeding technique is as simple as the tool (not to mention its user).  Water cabbage is the current problem.  When the cabbage bunches up, it forms rafts.  All I need to do is throw the hook into the middle of a large mat and reel in my catch.  It is almost as easy as tearing out carpet.

I had considered hooking right on the shoreline.  Because there is no quick retreat down there, I checked for crocodiles.  That struck me as a bit silly since I have not seen a crocodile in the pond that early in the day for a long time.

I wasn't surprised when I could not see anything in the usual locations.

But I changed my mind about schlepping down the bank when I realized I was wearing the wrong sandals.  Besides, I can get a better throwing angle when I stand on the elevated walkway.

What standing on the walkway does not do is improve my aim.  My first throw was a terrible slice.  I had plenty of distance, but I was off to the right by at least fifteen feet.  It happens.

So I started pulling the hook back in -- while it oozed through the muck on the bottom of the pond.

When I was a trial lawyer, I learned a healthy distrust of eyewitness testimony.  Our minds are marvelous machines.  But always suspect. 

We see something happen.  Our brain interprets it.  We form a memory.  The fact that the memory may bear very little relationship with the something that happened is a basic tenet of psychology. 

It is why three eyewitnesses can describe the same event in three completely different ways.

Well, you have just one eyewitness for this tale.  Me.  And this is what I recall.

The hook was almost to the shoreline when my entire operation stopped.  My first impression was that I had snagged something on the bottom.  But my mind said: "No, idiot.  You ignored that quick movement near the shore."

All I saw was a quick strike from the left.  When I saw it, I knew what it was.  I just didn't want to believe what had happened.  I suppose denial kicked in at some level.

The small crocodile who plies the waters almost nightly had snapped her jaws around my rope.  And she was not letting loose.  I thought if I tugged, she would realize she had a rope in her mouth, not a snake or some other delicacy. 

I suppose I gave her too much credit.  She was not going to turn loose.

Now, you J.M. Barrie fans are probably jumping ahead in the plot.  After all, there is a hook and a crocodile.  The only thing missing is an alarm clock.  But that is not this tale.

In my version, I waited.  And waited.  Time (with or without an alarm clock) is hard to estimate in these circumstances.  But enough was enough.

I decided to do something that could easily have have landed me on "World's Stupidest Videos."  If she would not turn loose with gentle pulls, we would see how she enjoyed a little bout of tug-of-war.

She is small.  And amazingly light.  When I started pulling, she resisted.  But I easily lifted her out of the water.

It then occurred to me.  This is the same crocodile I nearly stepped on at night when she was next to the walkway.  And the slope I was pulling her up was the same slope she had no trouble climbing on her own.

As the "you are beyond lame" warning went off in my head, the crocodile decided she had had enough of my tomfoolery.  She turned loose.  I recovered the hook, coiled the rope, and went back to get my camera.

It is too bad I did not have it with me while I was battling the beasty.  But I did get a couple of rather blurry shots of her waiting for me to get just a bit closer.

The fact that driving my car in Melaque is far more dangerous than the events of this little tale does not take away from the adrenalin high. 

But it is a good reminder that solo weeding is not without its perils.