32 THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 



violently to one side and went under. Fortunately, I did 

 not lose my gun, and as soon as I could find my feet, lost 

 no time in getting to the grass. In spite of my shake-up, 

 I had very good shooting; but walked around the edges of 

 the ponds to pick up the ducks I shot, instead of crossing. 

 What happened was a very large alligator had deepened 

 the centre of this little pond for his den, and when I stepped 

 on him, he threw me off his back and hit me on the leg with 

 the side of his jaw. I don't think for a minute he made 

 any attempt to catch me, for he could have easily done so. 



There was another very large alligator whose den was 

 in a pond in exactly the same sort of a position as the one 

 I fell in, not more than a mile from this one, and for more 

 than fifteen years I offered a reward to the trappers who 

 worked these lands for the capture of these big fellows 

 alive, but they were so smart they could not be caught. 

 During the great drought of 1925-1926, these ponds dried 

 up, and both alligators disappeared and have never been 

 seen since. They probably went to open water and were 

 killed by hide-hunters. 



During the winter months, occasionally alligators are 

 caught away from their dens, and on cold days become com- 

 pletely numbed, and incapable of moving. A rather amus- 

 ing incident happened to me in connection with a numbed 

 alligator. One day in January, 1895, I was hunting Jack- 

 snipe on the burned-over marshes west of Avery Island 

 with my friend, H. P. Kernochan of New York. The tide 

 was very low, with quite a stiff norther blowing. We 

 started hunting about nine o'clock in the morning, and 

 working backward and forward across the burns came to 

 a bayou about twenty-five or thirty feet wide, in which there 

 was very little water. Most of the snipe that we flushed 

 lit across this bayou, but as I knew the bayou had a soft 

 bottom, I did not feel like crossing. In going along its 

 border, I saw in the centre of the bayou an alligator per- 

 haps nine or ten feet long. There was only about six or 



