The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp Read Online Free PDF Page B

sugarcane. We’re talking about muscovado sugar, sweeter than honey, sweeter than maple syrup, sweeter than candied apples. As soon as Chap’s hand was large enough to grip the machete, his mom taught him how to cut the cane, just like Grandpa Audie had taught her. It was hard, sweaty work, but it was important work too. At first, Chap had felt clumsy as he hacked his way through the thick stalks, but his mother was a good teacher. She showed him how to swing and chop, swing and chop, until he felt the rhythm of it roll up from the blade of the machete to the muscles in his neck.
    After a couple of years, he was fast enough at it that hismother turned the task over to him. “You’ve earned it,” she said. Chap stood taller than ever, proud to be the family’s “chief chopper.”
    â€œJust don’t forget the lullaby,” said Grandpa Audie.
    Back in the day, the cane grew so thick, it made a canebrake in the bayou. That in turn made for a perfect home for rattlesnakes, Crotalus horridus . Canebrake rattlers. They could hide in the canebrake and wait for an unsuspecting lizard or mouse or frog to hop by, and snip-snap-zip-zap ! No more lizard or mouse or frog.
    One day, back in Aught One, when the world was still new, the Sugar Man strode his way up the banks of the bayou and reached over to grab some of that delicious cane. Zap! A rattler struck out and bit him on the hand. Ouch! And before the Sugar Man knew what was happening, snip-snap-zip-zap those rattlers were chomping down.
    â€œOoooowwwwwwwiiiieeeeee!” he yelled. And with his enormous hands, he started flinging rattlers left and right. That didn’t stop the rattlers. They just kept on keeping on until soon there was a whole lot of thrashing and splashing going on in the middle of the Bayou Tourterelle.
    Anyone else, and he’d be dead from all that munching and crunching. But the Sugar Man was so big, and his heart was so large, that it took more than a few bites to bring him down.
    But look out below! Thanks to the commotion, the alligators, which were hovering just underneath the water’s surface, floated up to see what was going on. There, in the middle of the bayou, were some very succulent prey, namely canebrake rattlers.
    Spicy canebrake rattlers.
    It seems there was one huge alligator who started licking his chops and also slobbering a little. But it was that alligator in particular who made a fatal mistake. Well, his stomach made a fatal mistake.
    It started growling . . . gggrrrrrggggggllllllggggllllggrrrrrrggglll.
    It was enough to make the snakes stop right there. They looked again, and there wasn’t just one slobbering alligator; there was a whole flotilla.
    Now the Sugar Man, he was a keen observer of nature, and he observed that the canebrake rattlers were about to become alligator stew. And even though he was a little annoyed at the snakes for all their snip-snap-zip-zapping , he didn’t think they deserved to be served up al dente. Besides, he admired the way they guarded his sugarcane, even if they were a little testy.
    So, he just snatched that big slobbery alligator up in his palmetto-size hands, twirled him over his head, and flung him into the air. That gator flew all the way to Oklahoma.Well, you can imagine that none of the other gators were interested in being tossed through the sky, so they slunk underwater and floated right on down the bayou, a raft of gators, right past that wild sugarcane.
    (Have we mentioned that whenever the Sugar Man got angry, he threw things? Pirates . . . snakes . . . alligators . . .)
    To the snakes, it seemed like the big guy had saved their bacon, and then they felt a little bad for all that chewing they had done. In fact, they decided to let him help himself to their sugarcane any old time . . . at least for the any old time being.
    Of course, the Sugar Man knew that a snake’s word wasn’t