The Leopard-Gator

So I was around eight years old. My dad, presumably, was older. At the time we both lived in Petaluma, California, in the US.

Dad had this interesting fact he'd sometimes tell me and my siblings about the local McNear Creek, which was about a block away from the elementary school we attended. It seems, you see, that there was a terrible animal that lived there which you could sometimes hear growling when the weather was really wet... it was called a "Leopard-Gator." The reason for this odd name was simple, really: the animal had the front part of a leopard on one end and the front part of an alligator on the other end, so a dangerous head at both ends!

Naturally, I wanted to see this oddity. Having been raised on a steady diet of Ripley's Believe It or Not, Godzilla, Ray Harryhausen Movies, and Bob Wilkin's Creature Features, all meant that the possibility of a freakish monster in my own home town was more exciting than alarming. Besides, I always figured I could outrun a Leopard-Gator if I had to... after all, its legs pointed in two different directions, so it should have a terrible time running in any direction at all!

But dad warned all of us to leave the Leopard-Gator alone, for it was infamous for attacking anything and everything it laid its eyes on. In fact, the beast was always angry; so angry that no attempt should ever be made to get near it; It's anger was a force of nature, making the creature forever irrational and destructive... and all because of One. Small. Problem.

WHAT WAS THAT 'ONE SMALL PROBLEM'?! WHAT HIDDEN CLUE TO THE MONSTER'S BEHAVIOUR DID IT HIDE?! We all insisted that anything he wasn't telling us about the Leopard-Gator must be made public now, for both humanity's and sanity's sake!

It was quite simple, dad told us. The monster has two mouths, so it eats twice as much as any other animal.

But it also has no butt... so it can never poop.

... 

I love you, dad.

Even if you do mess with an eight-year-old's head.