Okay, here's the story-
Last week, my best friend, Jim Vincill, got a message on his voice mail from a man asking him to do some SCUBA work for him. No more details. Jim was not interested but he sent the contact info to me. Mr. B, I'll call him, needed someone to dive his upper lake to unblock a sluice pipe that had apparently been blocked by beavers, but was now under 10-15 feet of water. I have been trained in underwater salvage and rescue (thanks Don Brode), so I agreed to meet with him, survey the situation, and give him my price.
I decided to quote him half the going rate since it had been a while since I had done much other than sport diving. The actual job seems simple enough- maybe not easy, but simple. Dive down, find the pipe end, mark it with a buoy, and unblock whatever the beavers used to blocked it. When I saw the lakes (upper and lower) however, I had to ask a less than obvious question, "Are there any alligators in these lakes?" You'd think they would have mentioned it when the answer was "Yes, we saw one in the lower lake."
There's no such thing as "one alligator".
Now contrary to common perceptions, alligators will avoid people whenever they can UNLESS the people have been feeding them. Mr. B's family assured me that they had not. I'll be fine, but Jim is coming along with his side-arm just-in-case. So this coming Saturday I will don the gear and once again be employed under the surface. I've been calling it "underwater demolition", which it is, but no explosives will be used. Pictures will be posted here and on facebook.
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