I was at Everglade Wade’s Li’l Swamp o’Gators this summer, where every year hundreds of visitors come from all over Florida to learn all about alligators, alligator habits and Everglade Wade’s lifelong mission of alligator husbandry. I took Sammy, that kid I was mentoring, and he especially liked the gift shop, which offers lacquered, glass-eyed gator heads in various sizes for a very fair price.

Family fun and education comingled in what might have been a perfect afternoon had E.W. not speciously claimed, halfway through his wrasslin’ exhibition, that his oldest ‘gator—Big Orson—was “a perfect example of a modern-age dinosaur.”

“Bunkum!” I shouted through the chicken wire.

“Do what to ‘im?” Wade asked.

“Nonsense!” I hollered. “Can Big Orson detect sound, motion and other stimuli with a full battery of infra-red, sonic and touch sensors? Can I guide him around my house with a totally rad remote control that looks like a video game controller?”

The nerve of Everglade Wade! Had he never heard of Roboraptor, the country’s most popular dino-robot predator toy? An alligator, a “modern-age dinosaur,” really! Roboraptor has a sleek, mecha-fossil-looking chassis, a look that’s updated thousands of years beyond Big Orson’s dull and scaly retro hide!

That’s just what I was screaming at Everglade Wade when he and a couple of his assistant gator wranglers had to come restrain me. I was pretty hot—one of the wranglers popped me in the nose, and there was a lot of commotion—but it must have been right about that moment that Big Orson ate Sammy.

So anyway, I’d planned to give Sammy this Roboraptor for his birthday, but I guess it’s extra now. Want it?

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