There once was a girl who lived on a houseboat in Louisiana. Her name was Suzanne Marie Sabine Chicot Thibodeaux, but her parents called her Sue for short. (Thank goodness!)
One day a hurricane swooped down and took Sue right up into the sky. Finally it dropped her down into an ancient live oak tree, where she stayed all night long. The next morning, Sue jumped down, to find herself in a gator nest! A mama alligator was keeping watch over that nest, and Sue came snout to snout with her. The alligator was quite taken with Sue, even more so when Sue fainted, and she covered her up with Spanish moss and crooned some nice lullabies to her while she slept.
Mama Coco adopted Sue and took care of her like she was her own. When Mama’s eggs all hatched, Sue found herself with seventeen brothers and thirteen sisters, all wiggly and alligatory. As time went by, Sue began to forget her own mommy and daddy, and became to feel like a girl of the swamp. She learned how to walk on all fours, how to catch dragonflies, to eat crawfish, and how to float on her belly, all like an alligator.
It was hard when winter came. All the alligators went to sleep to wait for spring, but Sue couldn’t stay asleep that long, and was very lonely until everyone woke up again.
Finally, Mama Coco found out where Sue came from, and she took Sue to see her old houseboat. It had long since broken down and her parents weren’t there anymore, so Sue spent some time wandering around, trying to remember what it was like to be a human. She decided it was too hard to remember.
On her way back to the swamp, another terrible storm blew in. Mama Coco had a new nest of eggs and couldn’t leave them – but how could Sue help? She raced back to the houseboat and grabbed her father’s old accordion. She played as loudly as she could, and all the alligators joined her. They made so much noise that they out-noised the storm, and it had to leave.
Finally Sue came to a realization – she wasn’t complete without both sides of her upbringing. Each set of parents had given her something valuable – and that became who she was. Alligator Sue, the best of both worlds.
(This book was published in 2003 by Melanie Kroupa Books and was illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf.)
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