Here's a bedtime story to help explain the current caiman problem to your children. Most of us don't know what sort of timeline the caimans have for their heinous plan (although I know a few of you collaborators out there are privy to the inside scoop. You know who you are, and so do I!). Since those odious creatures can be very patient, it could be years before their design becomes apparent, in which case it is our grave responsibility to educate the future generations (since I'm supposed to kick the bucket in 2008! according to another thread). So here we go, although it has been many years since my now adult daughter was little, I'll try to recapture the storytelling technique.

Once upon a time there was a big fight among the countries of the planet Earth. It was so big, it was called a world war. And this particular world war was the second one in a short time, so it was called World War II.

One of the men who started this bad war was a little guy named Adolf Schicklgruber. Yes, he had a funny name, and a funny salute, and a very funny and ridiculous moustache called a "toothbrush moustache." He had soldiers and he made them march in a funny walk called a "goose-step." Mr. Schicklgruber was later known as Hitler. And although things he did and said looked funny, he was really very sick in his head and had never learned how to live. He didn't think he was funny at all. Schicklgruber was a very serious guy. Too serious. Part of being alive and enjoying life means you have to be able to laugh at yourself, but old Schicklgruber wasn't able to do that. Today, he would be called a Loser, with an capital "L."

This miserable little man was so unhappy with his miserable little life that he used all his energy into making the rest of the world miserable, and in the process he grew into one of the most evil people who ever lived. That means he enjoyed hurting other people. And he hurt a LOT of people. Fortunately, he was stopped, and I'm happy to say that many Americans, probably including your grandparents or great-grandparents or even great-great grandparents, were an important part of fighting this sick and evil stain on the human race. I have known many people who fought in that war, and they all say war is a very bad thing, but in this case there was no choice. Evil had to be stopped.

Anyway, Mr. Schicklgruber, thanks in part to Americans, was finally squished like the repulsive insect he was. Meanwhile, many of the crazy people who were part of his evil plan escaped to a place called South America. And there they played with a science called "genetics." In bad horror films of the 1950s and 1960s this science of "genetics" was also known as "playing in God's domain." Anyway, they performed experiments on an animal down there called caimans. These creatures looked like crocodiles and alligators, except that nature gave them an impish and evil grin. And the helpers of Mr. Schicklgruber were able to give these giant reptiles the abiility to think smarter thinks than other animals.

Many years later, after raising thousands of these smart caimans, an innocent animal lover up in the area of Olympia, Washington wrote a letter and enclosed a check for the delivery of these same baby reptiles without realizing they were really super-smart animals raised by incredibly sick and evil people. This poor, innocent, heart-is-pure, old-McGovern-volunteer didn't know that these caimans were the product of some twisted genetic experiment.

To use the same words as the poor, innocent, heart-is-pure, old-McGovern-volunteer, "My intentions were good. Really. When I dumped them into Capitol Lake, I remember yelling, 'Swim Wild! Be Free!' And I thought it would surely be a major tourist attraction for Olympia and the good for the local economy." Yes, a truly noble motive. What a selfless and modest person he must be. Sure, he made a two-fold mistake: first, mail-ordering the creatures in the first place without any real plan for keeping them, and second releasing them into a lake shared by everybody. But he was a good person-- just not too smart, certainly not deserving of any continual blame for his deed by certain people who shall remain nameless but they know who they are. He knew even as their little squiggly bodies vanished under the placid murky surface of that lake as he was releasing them that he was somehow doing something terrible, but by that time it was too late to stop the deed. What a terrible tragedy. This poor man certainly deserves sympathy and probably enormous sums of money to ease his conscience (contact me for details). 

And the little caimans grew. Capitol Lake is not a real lake. It is a fake lake. It used to be an estuary, that means a place where a river runs into a bay, so when the tide went out it was mud. But some guys who wore big wigs (and people who wear big wigs look just as funny as Mr. Schicklgruber) decided to stop the water and create a fake lake so the mud was always under the water just because it looked prettier that way. That was a big mistake, sort of like those Germans in South America who were "playing in God's domain." Sometimes, prettier isn't better, and that is an idea you can apply to people as well as artificial lakes.

These Olympia caimans, who were already smarter than most animals, happened to swim close to a military ship visiting Olympia called the Fisher which contained something called "depleted uranium," and this amazing thing made the caimans grow thumbs overnight. So far in the natural world, no reptiles have special thumbs called "opposable thumbs," until NOW! And in short order the caimans learned to walk on two feet, and smoke cigarettes. They wear long coats called trenchcoats, and wear hats called fedoras. At night, after you go to bed, they walk the streets.

By an incredible coincidence that I could never make up but it is really true, really it is, several months after the caimans were released in Capital Lake by the totally poor, innocent, heart-is-pure, old-McGovern-volunteer, an invasive species called the nutria appeared in the lake. The nutria is really a big swimming rat. No one knows how they got there. But they are from the same part of the world as the caiman, and caimans really love to eat nutrias. Since this meant Capitol Lake was now a dangerous place, some people called it "Lake of Doom." But the lake, being a fake lake, was also filled with junk, so it was later called the Fetid Lake of Doom, or FLOD if you take all the first letters and put them together. "Fetid" means that it really stinks and it is putrid. If you ever have a chance to clean up around that lake, you'll know what I mean. Especially if you find dead animals, like ducks. Yuk.

So here we are today. A fake lake filled with caimans who have thumbs and brains and can walk the streets at night and they smoke cigarettes. What are they up to? What will their next move be? So to all the children of the Olympia area, stay away from strangers with trenchcoats, hats, and long tails. And don't even think about smoking cigarettes, not only do they kill you, but they might lead you right into the claws of a caiman.

The End.