When I was little, animals took on lives and characteristics which nobody knew anything about except myself. Little things that people did or said grew into fantastic stories. There was a man who turned into an alligator for my amusement. All he did was live in a one-room house by himself down near Lake Belle. He came into the village one evening near dusk and stopped by the store. Somebody teased him that if he did not hurry up and get married, he was liable to go wild, living alone out there. I saw him tending his garden, but I made an image of him in my imagination that was different. In my mind, his work-a-day hands and feet became the claws of an alligator. A tough, knotty hide crept over him, and his mouth became a huge snout with prong-toothed, powerful jaws. I could just see him crawling from his door at night, turning his ugly head from left to right to see who was looking, then gliding down into the dark waters of Lake Belle. When I heard the thunder of bull 'gator voices from the lake on dark nights, I used to whisper to myself, "That's Mr. Pendir! Just listen at him!" What is the reason the author uses the words "Just listen at him!" instead of "Just listen to him"?

A) because everyone talks that way when they are little

B) because it is how the alligator wanted the girl to talk

C) because that is how she would have talked back then

D) because the alligators often talked the same way to her