Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette Blogs

By JUSTIN PAPROCKI • 843-706-8143

The day before Zach Deputy was scheduled to appear in the studio to start recording his new album, his livelihood was stolen.

His tour truck, which included his instruments and clothing, was swiped from a La Quinta parking lot in Paramus, N.J. He was en route to Woodstock, N.Y., where had planned to begin recording his second studio album.

But he didn’t let the theft deter him. The next day, Deputy was demonstrating his technique on a borrowed acoustic guitar for the musicians who’d serve as his backing band. The day after, he was laying down vocal tracks. The resulting album has a title that reflects the optimism that got Deputy through those troubled days: “Sunshine.”

The Spay/Neuter Alliance and Clinic, or SNAC, is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to providing high-volume, low-cost spays and neuters. Located in Ridgeland, SNAC is the first high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter clinic in the region. With as many as six million pets euthanized each year, SNAC’s mission is to help reduce the euthanization and shelter intake rates. It does that by providing high-quality and low-cost spays and neuters to individuals, shelters, animal rescue groups and feral cat colony keepers.

I must admit that if you seek reassurance of life’s inherent goodness, the newspaper can be an awful thing to behold some days. Killings and other untimely deaths. Natural disasters. Scandals. Political intrigue.

So I understand when I get phone calls like the one I fielded from a gentleman late last week, imploring us to quit harping on the bad stuff and print more “good news.”

By JEFF VRABEL • 843-706-8140

Here’s what I did at work last Friday: Held an alligator. With my hands. Both of them. That is an essential strategy, because holding an alligator with one hand is a terrible idea, because no matter how you do it the gator is going to be hanging in some fashion, and that is highly unsafe, especially if the hanging portion contains the mouth. So I used both, which was good news for the alligator, because when you’re being held by someone who is quivering uncontrollably, the effect is probably that of a pleasant massage.

I was holding an alligator because it was brought to the office by gator wrangler/guy who could snap my spine in half like a pretzel stick Joe Maffo of Critter Management, a company that specializes in the removal of alligators from things, such as pools, ponds, baby seats and refrigerators. If there’s an alligator that needs to be relocated — often, it seems, because of tourists trying to impress someone by playing a minivan version of “Man Vs. Wild” or attempting to snap a cool picture for the breakroom bulletin board — it is his job to do so, which is the mathematical opposite of my job, which involves trying to tap-tappity funnies at 2 a.m. for one of these “newspapers” that my grandkids will be asking me about in the way that I ask about, say, stegosauruses, like: “Wait, they really had those?”