THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 43 



submerged, and in an incredibly short time came up along- 

 side one of them, caught one with a side swing of its head, 

 swallowed it and chased the other three to shore, without, 

 however, catching another. It must have known that there 

 were more of the young rails on the opposite bank, for it 

 kept very still with only its eyes showing above the water. 

 In a very few minutes one of the other young started across 

 the canal to join its mother. The alligator on seeing it in 

 the water submerged and came up alongside it, catching it in 

 the same manner it had the others. The remaining two 

 met with the same fate. What interested me more than 

 anything else in watching this episode was the accuracy with 

 which the alligator judged the distance in rising to the sur- 

 face for its victims. Each time it rose in exactly the right 

 spot to catch the swimming bird with a side swing of its 

 head, and these swings were made with flash-like rapidity. 

 No attempt was made to catch any of the little rails from 

 under the water, but the alligator rose to the surface each 

 time before making its kill. I believe, however, it could see 

 the swimming birds while still below the surface. 



Alligators that inhabit marshy pools in muskrat terri- 

 tory live very largely on muskrats. This I proved in 1916 

 while supervising the Louisiana State, the Sage and the 

 Rockerfeller wild life refuges in the coastal parishes of 

 Iberia, Vermilion and Cameron. I had forbidden the kill- 

 ing of alligators on these wild life refuges for four years, 

 and they had become very numerous. The men who 

 trapped the muskrats on these refuges complained that the 

 alligators destroyed a great many of the rats; so in April, 

 1916, I caused fifty alligators to be taken from the inland 

 part of each of these refuges and had my chief warden 

 examine the stomach of these alligators. None of these 

 alligators were killed in bayou or open water, all of them 

 being taken from land-locked small ponds. Muskrats 

 proved to be the principal food of every one of these alli- 

 gators, with an occasional gallinule, rail, duck, fish, rabbit 



