Gee, I didn’t know that Happy actually works for Chet Chedderson, the obnoxious shipping magnate, and his man-child, Brett. Or maybe Chet just assumes Happy knows what to do. But Mark and Happy should know that the gator is not likely going to chase anybody and that the best thing to do is just play around him. A better outcome would be that Chet creates a tourist attraction out of the gator, similar to his “dangerous” water slide park. He can call the course “Gator Golf.”

Okay, this ho-hum story has to have some drama and there isn’t much of it in golf, unless you are a golfer. Hence, the alligator. Maybe things will get more exciting if Mother Cheshire’s prized peacock wanders onto the scene and becomes the gator’s afternoon snack! I’d love to see how Cherry and  Honest Ernest react to that situation!

Say, did you notice that  Cheshire and Chedderson (a cheese name pun) are both names for cheeses? A coincidence? Or the newest global conspiracy!?

Art Dept. Not sure what those squiggly lines symbolize in panel 1. Is Brett having a heat stroke? Is he burning up? Is his head shivering or trembling? We can rightfully claim some confusion, because Rivera used similar lines around Rusty last Friday, to show he was shivering after sliding into very cold water.

Given how this strip has lately been drawn, I have to admit that Mark’s head in panel 3 is a well-designed rugged and expressive head. A lot is due to a good application of thick and thin lines by Rivera, supported by Mark’s expression. And it’s an order of magnitude beyond the cartoony images in the other panels.