DANGER: ALLIGATORS AND SNAKES IN AREA. STAY AWAY FROM THE WATER, read the signs tacked to the rails of the creaky wooden platform behind Ray’s Millpond restaurant. But we were a horde of children on summer vacation, and reading, for those of us who could, was the last thing on our to-do list. Hyped up on fried fish and sweet tea, my cousins and I were bound headlong for the swamp. I was normally A little voice yelled and someone pointed to a floating log. You could barely hear the bullfrogs through the merriment.
