It’s a bit sad really. An old hand made toy gator that has become redundant, but then again, it’s the usual story for stuff you make for kids. I got this one from Alexis Lodsun, one of the very helpful and competent ladies manning the upstairs of Transformer, making sure that everything behind the scenes is always running the way it is supposed to. She told me that her grandfather had made it – he was working with wood and took to making toys for all the kids between shifts. Now, all the kids in the family had grown up, so what was the reason for holding on to the gator? This is not an uncommon reason at all, for why people bring me stuff to fix. They come in with something that they are actually really attached to, and would like for me to give them a reason to keep it. Of course I could not deny Alexis this.

After my upgrade, the gator looks sort of the same, but now, instead of being a toy, he is an Adult Alligator. If Alexis needed a reason to keep him on the sitting room table, the only more convincing reason I could have given her would have been converting him into an ashtray, but for that his body material just wasn’t suitable. And, of course, as I am a highly responsible maker, I added a fire-hazard warning text on his belly.