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Lady Luck is about to betray me. It looks like I will win a lottery I would rather not: a hunting permit for some very wily game.

The fierce hunk of luggage leather known as the American Alligator draws no sympathy from me. My great aunt learned to never garden with her back to the canal on account of one of these sneaky reptiles and it was a close call. This cold blooded critter enjoys a nonsensical but legally protected status even though it is not an endangered species with little to no natural predators of its own. The Department of Natural Resources literature has very little to offer in defense of the alligator beyond some muzzy mention of ‘helping to keep other species’ population under control’.

Southern waterways in human populated areas sport signage warning people that it is illegal to harass the alligators, with no mention of the menace the reptiles in turn pose. Whenever I return to my car after shopping at the local mall, I warily check in advance that there isn’t one lurking under the car. With this not being an altogether infrequent occurrence, the DNR has quietly taken to issuing lottery allocated hunting licenses in the past several years. In my state of South Carolina where the estimated alligator population runs around 100,000, this year one thousand lucky hunters can win a chance to legally bag their own gator. Most of them will be hoping to plunge their harpoons into the granddaddy-sized ones that can reach 16 feet in length.

Not being a gambling woman under normal circumstances, I didn’t check my odds before agreeing to paying for my spot in the lottery. I rationalized that I never win anything so there was nothing to worry about, no personal face to lose. So now I find out that only several hundred people entered last year and everyone was a lucky winner with licenses to spare. To save face, I cannot back out now. So how did I get in this jam to begin with?

I should blame Walt, my next door neighbor, for egging me on. Since his prostate surgery, he hasn’t been a happy man and he has let me know about it. An avid outdoorsman, he has found this hiccup in his lifestyle to be a literal pain in the ass. Not my choice of words - his. He is grateful that his cancer recovery prognosis is a good one but he is the kind of guy who resents any enforced down time. He was caught off guard by the tiredness he experienced and worse yet, the stress urinary incontinence. He didn’t have to tell me about that part but that is Walt for you.

Everyone drops in on Walt via the garage door. It is a gaping maw at the end of his driveway, always pushed open when the earl is holding court. The knotty pine paneled walls are decked with testaments to his outdoorsmanship. Unearthly long snake skins, a mangy bobcat head and the piece de resistance, a monster alligator skin. For me, it is like looking at a car wreck; I can’t help myself despite a predictable case of the shivers every single time. As though pulled by a marionette string, my hand thrusts forward to trace the ridged distance from eyes to nostrils. Fascinatingly, this distance in inches serves as a good guesstimate for the beast’s actual length in feet. Handy stuff to know when sizing up a submerged gator.

A few days after his surgery, I was in the garage dropping off a casserole for him and doing my finger walking routine down the bumpy snout when Walt spilled his guts. “Well, Sister, I don’t know what kind of a man I am anymore, what with peein’ my pants and all these days. I probably should just buy me a rockin’ chair and some shares in one of them adult diapers companies.” He knew darn well that was my line of work and maybe that was why he felt so free to share his chagrin.

Walt is more than aware that his encounter with prostate cancer was a very sobering business. He also feels lucky that his prognosis is a happy one. But he remains the impatient, gung-ho character he always has been and is seriously annoyed with the common but most often temporary SUI (Stress Urinary Incontinence) that he has been forced to deal with. There was medical literature strewn across his oak bar that dominates the house-side wall of his garage that I was plenty familiar with. Much of it displayed photos of smiling, relieved male patients consulting with their physicians during prostate cancer treatment, learning the ins and outs of possibilities and procedures.

The literature explained how the prostate wraps around the urethra and after radiation or a prostatectomy, the sphincter muscles that hold back flow from the bladder may be too weakened for a few months to hold up to their job. If SUI persists after six to twelve months, there are numerous other medical options to explore to help eliminate bladder leakage.

Walt refused to have the patience required of a convalescent. He expected the most of his body now as he had before as though his iron will could translate quickly into an iron bladder. SUI is certainly far more than a mind over matter issue but that was how he was choosing to deal with it, even in his frankness about shopping for “adult diapers, pads or whatever the hell you called them.” He was determined to win the day with bravado and I realize now that is why he reached under the bar to pull out his trusty harpoon and bang stick. Plunking them down on the counter, he said, “You and me, we’re going to have some fun this September that we need to start plannin’ on now.” If he had to stare down the maw of a personal darkness, then Walt was going to make sure I had my own personal taste of terror, even if it was trivial in comparison to his.

In the heat of the moment, I foolishly put myself at the mercy of Walt’s diversion tactics and now today am staring at the electronic signature line of a DNR alligator hunting lottery application. He insists I have to save face and not back down, that it is the only way to conquer fear. There can be a lot of arguments against this logic when it comes to gator hunting but I get what Walt is saying. He is telling me that getting into that boat at dusk will be a grabbing hold of life. That it will be an honest but conquerable fear when my flashlight beam locks onto a pair glowing red eyes gliding along the cypress swamp’s black surface. And Walt assures me he won’t hold it against me if I have to wear a pair of adult diapers to retain my dignity on the terrifying adventure.