A long time ago a local man was robbing people, beating people up and generally giving scofflaws a bad name. Then he just disappeared. Most people figured he had drifted off to greener pastures.

Years later the bones were found and nobody could figure out what had happened. A few speculated that he had tried to poach alligators and the beast had gotten away from him and broken his legs with a swing of its tail. But where was the boat? And nobody would go out without some sort of gear. Had a gator attack sunk the boat and dumped the equipment leaving him to drag himself to the nearest land where the mosquitoes finished him off?

Wouldn't be the first time a big gator had got the best of a hunter but it still seemed strange. The guy wasn't known to hunt. Hunting gators takes a fair bit of grit and hard work. He was more a no-count bully and lazy as the day was long. More a coward who would blanch at facing down something as tough as an alligator. It was a mystery.

Years later the other shoe dropped when an old farmer made a deathbed confession that he had 'taken care of' a thief. He said he had laid a trap, caught him, broke both his legs, paddled him way out into the swamp, dropped him off on a tiny island and went home.

I don't advocate violence and taking the law in ones own hands seldom works out well. But historically bad people often met their end in the deep woods. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes helped along on their journey. Kind of a 'Circle of Life' thing.