By Leigh Ann Speake
When my brother Nick & I were growing up Orange Beach Marina was like a second home to us. We loved walking the docks, looking at the boats, learning from the salty charter boat captains, watching the tourists, imagining what was lurking below the surface of the oily black water, getting frozen treats at the dock store, smelling the fishy breezes, perusing the cleaning stations to see what was being caught, talking to the deck hands to see what lures were working, eavesdropping on the boat brokers working deals. We both loved working on the boat and helping Dad any way that we could.
Dad’s buddy, & resident OB boat broker Jim Greene, cleaned out his storage shed one day. He had an old deer mount that was looking rough, so he had cut out the antlers & thrown the deer head onto his trash pile. Nick & I got a brilliant idea.
Amongst the creatures at the marina were some very large wharf rats. Dad had a 41’ Viking Convertible at the time, and our slip had a trash can directly in front of it. Nick & I decided to put the deer head in the bushes behind the trash can. We then camped out on the flybridge of the Viking so we could watch people react. I was the best kind of entertainment, and we were rolling in laughter for hours, but Dad’s reaction was the best by far.
After emptying all the trash cans on the boat & making several trips to the big trash can without noticing anything out of the ordinary, he made one final trip & was so surprised and startled by the giant “rat” in the bushes that he jumped back screaming & almost fell in the water. We thought it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen.
