When I was eight months pregnant with my third child John and I went canoeing in Blue Springs, Florida. That is a sanctuary for manatees, and a favorite spot for alligators. We were floating along on the glassy water when people on the shore started pointing at us. 

"Am I such an oddity? Have they never seen a pregnant woman in a boat?"

Then we looked down. There was a ten foot long alligator underneath our hull. John stayed calm, and paddled us in a different direction, while the beast and his hundreds of teeth kept going forward. Perhaps he had already eaten that morning. 

When my son was in seventh grade he and his friend were messing around near the Pennypack. Such adventures were often an interesting foray into nature but one day was different. 

"We saw an alligator! It was three feet long!" Zack was breathless from running when he told the family. 

"That is amazing!" I smiled. 

"No you didn't," said his sisters. I have a gullible streak anyway but I was pretty sure he would not mistake a wet log for an alligator. 

The next day it was in the newspaper. The picture showed a five foot reptile being held up by the person who found it. There were speculations about how it ended up in our local stream but the animal refused to incriminate anyone. 

"That's not it." Zack was adamant. "It was smaller."

His sisters, the ones who did not believe him yesterday, urged him to let it go. 

"So you misjudged the length. You were still right!"

John believed him and mentioned it to the police chief, who had enough faith in Zack to investigate. Sure enough, there was another gator. A three foot one. They were both relocated to the local zoo. 

I read about an alligator who lost his or her tail while being transported illegally by exotic poachers. Not that the criminals were exotic. Anyway being cramped up in a trailer one captive took it out on the other and the tail got ripped off. When the misdeed was discovered Mr. Stubbs was adopted by a herpetological society that wanted to make things right. They attached the tail of a deceased alligator to his rump, but it wasn't a good fit. Later they got creative and made one using 3-D technology, crafted to Mr. Stubbs's exact body metrics. It made life, and swimming, imminently better. He is now an ambassador for prosthetics.

The notion that a tail can be designed for a specific animal is awesome. Undeniably it would be preferable to one that was hand made for a different creature. I believe that each person has a life, with all of its rough edges, that is uniquely created for them. Not off the rack. Not a hand me down. It does not, I admit, preclude the possibilities of being captured by bad guys, or lost in a dark forest. But it also opens up such possibilities as being rescued by a twelve year old.