THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 41 



water holes away from the bayous, an entirely different 

 menu would have been found. 



It is quite safe to say that the food of the alligator at 

 some period of its life, consists of every living thing 

 coming in range of its jaws that flies, walks, swims, or 

 crawls that is small enough for them to kill, and covers 

 a tremendously wide range. In their young days, shortly 

 after leaving the nest, their principal food is insects and 

 small fish; after reaching a length of sixteen to twenty 

 inches their food consists of crawfish, crabs, small fish, 

 small frogs and other small reptiles and insects. After 

 they reach three feet in length and larger, any creature 

 inhabiting the land or water which they can catch and 

 swallow is good food. Until they reach a length of five 

 feet they are not a considerable menace to animals and the 

 larger birds, although I have seen muskrats, rabbits, young 

 ducks, rail and other small birds taken from alligators 

 between three and five feet in length, but up to this size 

 their principal food consists of small things. 



Illustrative of how distructive small alligators sometimes 

 are, I will give a couple of instances that have come under 

 my personal observation : 



On April 8, 1916, I was watching an old hen Dusky 

 Duck with a brood of eight young ones swimming in the 

 canal near my shooting camp in Vermilion Parish. The 

 tide was low and the old duck had brought her newly- 

 hatched brood to the water, and was quietly feeding with 

 them along the edge of the canal, whose bank was steep 

 and several feet above the water. I saw a small alligator 

 swimming towards the old duck and her brood; when it 

 got near it quickened its pace, and although the old duck 

 napped madly away, calling to her brood, who swam after 

 her as fast as they could, the alligator overtook the rear 

 young, grabbed one and throwing its head into the air, 

 swallowed it, and with hardly a pause, swam rapidly after 

 the others. In a distance less than two hundred feet it 



