Alligator Season, and the One Gator With a Lawyer
the door. the handwriting is a priest's. you can tell by the commas.
Wild alligator season is open in the east zone, which means that for the next month the state of Louisiana has issued a set number of tags, each with a number on it, and every licensed hunter in this basin is out with a line and a tag looking to put that tag on a gator.
I want to talk about the tags.
Every tag is numbered. Every number goes to a hunter, every hunter to a piece of property, and every piece of property to a map the state keeps. When a gator is taken, the tag goes on the tail and the number goes in a book. You understand what I am telling you. The state knows, to the animal, how many gators there are, where they are, and which ones it is willing to lose.
Which brings me to the church.
The parish paper reports that the priest in Le Marais Perdu has posted a notice on the church door granting sanctuary to Monsieur Boudreaux II, the alligator who attends the 9 o'clock, "for the duration, and for the left side." The paper called a lawyer, who said sanctuary has not been a legal doctrine since about the year 1600, and then said that in this case he personally would not test it.
Friends, a lawyer does not say "I personally would not test it" about a doctrine from 1600. A lawyer says that about a client.
Here is my read. That gator has representation. Somebody in that parish has looked at the state's book of numbers and made sure one animal is not in it, and the priest's notice is the public filing. I tried to find the lawyer. The paper did not print his name, which is the paper's way, and every lawyer I called in Breaux Bridge said they had not spoken to the Chronicle, which is exactly what a lawyer would say.
I will admit the hunters I spoke to say nobody was ever going to tag the church gator, out of respect, and also because he knows everybody's schedule. One of them said, "You don't put a tag on a gator who's been to more Masses than you." I do not have an answer for that.
I relay. You decide.
In Truth and Terror.
— Beau
