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Alligators provoke vehicles on highways

By Ken Fehr
Garden Valley Collegiate
Winkler, Manitoba


Alligators on the highway near Calgary, Alberta almost compelled a car to flip into the ditch.

It was late and the sun had just gone down about an hour ago. No one was sleeping but everyone was getting a little too relaxed. The teens had rented a brand-new vehicle from a car rental agency in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As they were driving on the Trans-Canada highway on their way to Calgary, a vicious alligator ready to kill slowed the innocent travellers down.

"I thought it was a dog I hit!" the driver exclaimed. The passengers saw what it really was.

The front right fog lamp of the 1998 Grand Am had been ripped out of its socket. The alligator had decimated the fiberglass moulding under the bumper.

"I thought about swerving to the side to avoid the alligator but if I had, we might have ended up in the ditch," the driver proclaimed.

After the vehicle lost the foglamp, the exasperating journey was over. The driver handed the wheel over to one of the passengers because he said he was starting to see things on the road.

Truckers have different words for objects when they talk to each other over the CB. A small vehicle is called a four-wheeler and a cop is called a smokey-bear. Truckers use these codes so the cops can't tell what they're talking about. A tire torn off a semi-trailer is very dangerous to other highway tractors. That is why a tire on the road is called an alligator.



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