It’s now 21 days into the 30 day season on Swamp People on History, as we meet up with Ronnie Adams and Ashley Dead Eye Jones in Lake Verret Spillway. Ronnie has brought some stink to the party. Ashley barfs at the sight and smell of Ronnie’s “Ducky Wucky.”
It’s understandable. Have you ever smelled poultry that is rotting? It will change you. “Stank catches gators,” says Ronnie, the Swamp professor to Che Che, who is bent over the side of the boat, hurling her guts out.
Ronnie then gets eye guts and eyeball goo on her shirt, and now it’s real. She helps him, but she’s reeling from the odors. “Bring me something good duckie,” says Ronnie as the lines are baited, and the two skedaddle after catching a huge bull.
The Casanova brings the ladies to the yard
Joey Edgar and Zac Catchem are in the harem of a bull, and all the lady gators are showing in the yard, but Mr. Bull? Bent hooks and missing bait lead the two to dub him a “Casanova” gator and likely 11 to 13 feet in length.
Joey and Zac create a Willow tree snare for Casanova, and they, too, boogie on down the bayou.
Willie and Little Willie are at bat next. Little Willie has earned the respect of dad, not an easy feat. “He coming up to be an alligator hunter, let him take it over,” says Willie.
The two are wrapping up their season, and Willie takes Little to the “pit,” outside a levee. This 40-foot deep water is perfect for the giants. “Got some good bulls in it,” says Willie. The two snare an 11-foot goliath and proceed to fill the hold.
Little Willie nearly became gator bait
Later on down in this episode, Willie mimics a baby gator and gets Little Willie to bag another one with his gun. Willie tells us if you kill it, you gotta go get it. Kind of like Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas when their characters argue over who is going to dig the hole for Billy Batts. Little Willie has to go fetch his dead gator. Maybe dead. In 40 feet of dark water.
In the gator-filled water, with his hands.
“Watch that thing, boy!” yells Willie as his son is neck-deep using his hands to find a maybe dead alligator. Luckily the gator was, in fact, dead, and quite small and his gator eyeball hanging out by its optic nerve seemed to be a source of amusement for both Willies. “I’m proud of him, and I love him to death,” says big daddy.
Troy is insufferable
And back to Lake Verret, Terral and Troy are taking it to a secret honey hole where Terral swears the bigguns are. “Ain’t nobody been in there for five years,” says Terral. Troy is gun shy and not keen on hearsay, but Big Buddy is 62 years old, and he knows where them gators are. “Just to make him happy, I’ll try,” says Troy.
Then they catch a squirmy seven-footer, and Troy is like, meh, big whoop! Sensing the King of the Swamp is not impressed with his hole, Terral says: “Troy don’t let stuff go too.” Then Terral is like, ‘what do you want from me?’ He knows what he knows. There’s going to be a tense brown bagger lunch in the boat, y’all.
Okay, so this episode is all about building up the backstory of this alleged “Casanova” as Joey has trumped it up really good, and they are on the prowl for the big bull who has all dem sister wives’ gators floating about, you know, waiting.
They catch a huge gator with a missing arm, and now Casanova’s backstory is delightful. “We need to get rid of this menace,” says Joey, who surmises this particular male got too close to the ladies of the Casanova harem, and Casanova chomped his gator arm off as a warning.
Back over to Ronnie, the white bird theory is playing out as Ashley is green, and Ronnie is adamant that the white bird bait is the holy grail. The stanky duck bait is making her vomit constantly. Eventually, they get a fighter on the line, but if Che Che keeps barfing, she’s going to be the gator bait. She says: “Ronnie’s bait is disgusting, but we are catching gators..it ended up working.”
The apprenticeship of Little Willie graduates to guns. “A gun is a dangerous thing,” says Willie. They get Little Willie set up, and he is given a gun to shoot. “Normally, as a deckhand, you don’t get to handle a gun. I feel pretty good about that,” says Little Willie. It turns out that Little is a dead-eye Dick and nails the gator and finishes him on the hill with daddy’s pistol. A natural!
Willie is super proud. “We catched us some monsters this morning,” brags Little Willie. Looks like the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.
So the King is moaning about Terral’s lame secret spot, the Cypress Hole, which is producing mediocre gators. They are getting juveniles, and Troy decides to move on and cut their losses.
Then Terral spots a ten-foot Godzilla, and it’s on. Troy nails him and then Terral gloats. “Troy’s a man who will never eat his words, never happen,” says Big Buddy. It’s getting to be beer thirty, and the two move along down the road.
Ronnie Adams is a swamp poet laureate
“Winner, winner, duckie dinner” is Ronnie’s rallying cry. Then his alliteration is one for the ages: “What a day so far, when we hooked that big boy on that quack quack itty duck, duck, her [Ashley] whole demeanor changed. She went from Miss negative, negative to Miss happy joy, joy.”
“Quack, quack pays off Chuck,” Ronnie threw in for fun when they bagged yet another gator as Ronnie praised his granddad.
So wrapping up the Casanova theme of the episode, Joey and Zac are in a last-ditch effort to bag the ladies man. “After Casanova straightened out hook…if he bites on this here? He’s done!”
A downed line and dramatic music ensue. They say in unison: “WHOOOOAAAAA.” This is a huge bull, a monster underneath the Willow tree. “Take him out, take him out, take him out,” says Zac. Joey pops the rifle, and death is imminent. “We needed to get him out of the breeding population,” says Joey.
Don’t eat at Terral’s house
Now the end of the episode leaves us with Terral and Troy chewing over the fact Big Buddy may be right. “I saw a side of him I never knew was there,” says Troy adding: “He’s not always serious, some days he makes me laugh.”
Terral then served up a deep-fried nutria turd in a pancake and FIN. We out for da week.
See y’all next week, the good lawd willing.
Swamp People airs Thursdays at 9/8c on History Channel.