You hear about this super crazy story up in Chicago last week?
(OK OK, I will acknowledge that I need to be much much clearer, as there are gazillions of crazy things that happen in Chicago.)
November 1. A 2-foot long alligator is found at O'Hare airport.
Alone.
Under an escalator.
It was captured and turned over to the Herpes Society.... I mean the Herpetological Society. no problems with "Allie". She's happy and healthy. And doesn't have herpes.
Now, police are trying to capture Allie's owner. Who left the gator at O'Hare, and why?
Just announced today......
Amazingly, with the use of photos on social media, the determined that the creature and its owner had travelled by train (Metra) to the airport.
With a little research, they were able to determine which train, and they were able to find several photos from security cameras of the pair on the train. In fact, they have photos of other train riders being allowed to pet the gator.
I'll stop here and pose a couple questions:
- how in the world were those police detectives successful at scouring social media to find a picture of THIS woman and THIS alligator on THIS train on THIS day? what really befuddles me is why these really incredible detectives' talents are being wasted on an abandoned alligator case. Put them on something important, something that really matters.
- how in the world was there still security camera footage from 10 days ago? This amazes me. with all the cameras in all the trains and on all the platforms and in all the parking lots, the Chicago Transit Authority must have some whopper DVR's. Way way more than the 100 hour one Dish Network gave me.
- how in the world did she and gator not get booted off the train? I mean, when you ride those things, there are like a million "no-no's":
no smoking.
no eating.
no drinking.
no loud music.
no copulating.
Guess no one thought to put up a no alligator sign. I'm not even sure they allow companion dogs, do they?
Based on footage, they know at 1:17am she got on the train at Pulaski Station.
And at 2:17am, she got off the train at O'Hare.
1 hour on the train.
In the middle of the night.
With an alligator!
Who does that?
Then, for whatever reason, she gets to the airport and ditches the poor thing.
Maybe on purpose?
Maybe because she came to the realization that they would not let her pass thru the security checkpoint?
Who knows ?
So, I'm thinking... what if something like this happened in Decatur?
Well, our airport does not have an escalator. So.... we'll have to continue this exercise using the escalator at the Bergners store in the mall.
And, Decatur has no train system. So, we'll say that Alligator Abby and her Alligator Allie rode the city bus to the mall.
When Abby lets the other riders on the bus pet Allie, I can imagine the bus driver not blinking an eye. An alligator wouldn't be anything compared to some of what they see each day tooling around town.
Could the alligator get carried into Bergners? yes. no security.
Could it be left under the escalator? I suppose. That's not real exciting though.
It would make a whole lot better of a story if left in the shoe department.
Right by the exotic alligator skin shoes.
Or by the Crocs.
Out for now.....
Matt