CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: THE GOOD STUFF IS USUALLY PRETTY AWFUL

It's amazing what a slow news day will do to normally civilized people.

Well, as civilized as reporters are likely to get.

One day not too long ago, I was having lunch at a downtown Cape Girardeau dining establishment with two co-workers.

Our regular table was booked and we found a table next to the alligator tanks.

One baby alligator was happily perched on the rocks, sharing the tank with three goldfish.

Then it moved.

"Hey," one of my co-workers observed, "it moved!"

That's why we're journalists. We notice these things.

Since on previous visits the alligators had perched in comatose contentment without so much as blinking, we knew something was up.

And we were right.

The alligator turned to face the fish and a few minutes later stretched and BOOM! A goldfish was missing.

Raised as I was on a steady stream of nature documentaries, I always wept in sympathy for the poor baby gazelles and water buffalo and gnus that wound up getting eaten by the predators of the week. "But, honey," my mother would say, "that's nature."

It's not that lions and tigers and cheetahs aren't pretty, but just once couldn't they show a tiger loading up at the local salad bar?

And why couldn't Marlin Perkins get in the water with the 90-foot, man-eating crocodile? Poor Jim probably had a wife and kids at home, too.

Of course, "Wild Kingdom" was sponsored by an insurance company.

Well, a few years in the newspaper business would warp Mother Teresa. You can't bleed for 'em all, as a former colleague used to say. And I'm sure it's a fatal flaw in my character, but I can't work up much sympathy for a goldfish.

Gnus are much more cuddly.

Back at the restaurant, we were eating our salads and the alligator was resting up from its meal.

A few minutes later it turned in search of another goldfish, and a few minutes after that, CHOMP!

That last little goldfish was starting to get nervous, we could tell.

"At least there's no blood," one co-worker commented.

At about that time, our main courses arrived, and the other co-worker remarked that our alligator pal would "make a nice wallet."

You haven't been glared at 'til you've been glared at by an alligator.

Since it was a slow news day and no one was too excited about getting back to the office, someone pointed out that we were obligated professionally to hang around and see what happened to that final goldfish.

Or we could torture the editors. That always livens things up.

"Let's call in and report a double-homicide downtown!"

It was true, in a kind of skewed, roundabout way.

As it happens, we didn't hang around. I think we can all make a pretty good guess about that goldfish's fate.

The trouble with slow news days is all the good stuff happens somewhere else.

And good stuff is usually pretty awful. Lisa Marie and Michael divorcing. Governments collapsing, presidents resigning. Candidates declaring, confessing, withdrawing. Train wrecks, plain crashes, earthquakes. Rapes, murders and other evidence that humanity is at least as efficient a predator as anything you'll find roaming the Serengeti or hunting goldfish.

Some days, the best news of all is knowing that, for now at least, you're not the one swimming in the alligator tank.

Peggy O'Farrell is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.