On a beautiful sunny Sunday morning last week we decided to walk around Praveen's high-priced neighborhood and look for gators. The houses are like palaces. The grounds are perfect - a leaf falls somewhere and suddenly there's a uniformed groundskeeper right there to put it away. A golf course meanders past the homes.
We walked towards the first hole. Beside it there was a driving range. In reality it was a large pond (a tank in Texas) and middle aged golfers were swinging away at it from it's manicured edges - using floating golf balls. I guess later someone comes by in a skimmer and collects the balls. And sure enough on the opposite bank an alligator was sunning itself on the edge. We walked past a huge egret. A hawk swopped down towards the shallows and snatched up a fish. Ospreys circled overhead. Vivian and Evan enjoyed the nature show. And Arjun pointed on where he played with his buddies when he was their age.
The sun was hot. So when Evan complained that he was thirsty and we were walking past the clubhouse it did make sense to drop in for water. But the young English bartender who didn't look like she was old enough to drink did make him and Vivian a couple of nice Shirley Temples. Which got the rest of us into ordering wine and beer and then the day got away from us and Arjun drove the kids around in a golf cart while we did nothing. No - Evan hasn't just finished giving me a two handed one-finger wave though it looks that way in the picture.
Later, back in Austin when I saw Evan's teacher, she said she had asked him if he visited Disney while he was in Florida. He said no. So what did you do, she asked. "We hunted for gators" he apparently replied. I had to agree that he was mostly right.
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