I was doing a river cleanup, on the Econlockhatchee, with an old, fat, crippled dude, wearing a smelly hat, when we found a dilapidated, moldy book, wedged into a strainer. It was titled The Book of Ellee. Obviously, we had to read this mysterious tome.
It turns out that Ellee, (pronounced "L E"), was an alligator, named by my great, great grandfather, Fontenot Beaoudreaoux.
(Yeah, we did away with some of those excess vowels, over the years)
Granpa Fontenot had joined a crew of New Yorkers, building the very first foot bridge along the Econ, when one of his compadres was eaten by an alligator. The beast lunged from the black waters of the creek they were spanning, snatching the poor soul from his perch, and dragging him, screaming, to the murky depths. The men panicked, firing their muskets into the water, but Grandpa Fontenot yelled at them, "Kite kayiman sa pou kont li. Li jis vle bay ti bebe li yo manje!", which, loosely translated from Creole, means, "Leave that gator be! She's tryin' to feed her chilruns!".
Because of a rather strange metal plate found nearby the site, illustrated with the text "LE41", Grandpa named the alligator Ellee.
Eventually, work resumed, though, so did the feasting. No matter what security steps the work crew took, every evening, one worker was taken. Pinkerton detectives were dispatched to kill Ellee, but Grandpa Fontenot, being a Cajun, sympathised with Ellee, thwarting their efforts at every turn. The Pinkertons abandoned their duty, when Grandpa Fontenot hid their strongbox, containing their pay. Being rather corrupt, the Pinkertons cared only about getting paid. With no money in their immediete future, they all walked away.
Grandpa Fontenot was the only survivor of that build, the rest succumbing to yellow fever, venomous snakes, and Ellee. It seems he wrote this book about the alligator, in the hopes that the rest of the world would come to see Ellee as a caring mother, rather than a scaley monster of death. In this book, Grandpa Fontenot offered clues on how to find the strongbox, stolen from the Pinkertons. Riffster and I followed the clues, slogging our way up Ellee Creek, eventually locating a soda bottle preform, in a kewl looking oak tree, with some bizarre alpha-numeric text inside. We could not make heads or tails over the text, so we had to shrug, and give up.
We left the preform at the posted coordinates.
Maybe you can figure out where the strongbox is?
Please use care, in your trek up Ellee Creek, as she still lives in the area, and might like to dine on geocachers.