THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 51 



next day in order to get the cattle through this part of the 

 water-road some of the men were obliged to swim their 

 horses ahead and the cattle then followed. 



In April, 1905, I was standing on the wharf at the can- 

 ning factory at Avery Island, talking to the night watch- 

 man just at dusk, when a large alligator appeared in the 

 canal about fifty yards away. The watchman said : "I be- 

 lieve that is the alligator I have seen catch hogs as they swim 

 across the bayou." I took the watchman's pistol (an of- 

 ficer's model 45 colt), and was lucky enough to put the 

 first bullet just back of the alligator's eye and through the 

 brain. It rolled over in the water throwing its two front 

 feet in the air (a position always taken by an alligator when 

 killed by a brain shot), dead. I sent a couple of men in a 

 skiff to bring it ashore, and after skinning, it was found to 

 have inside three pigs weighing about thirty pounds each 

 that had been swallowed whole. This alligator was not 

 quite twelve feet long. 



On September 6, 1931, I was riding with my overseer, 

 Nathan Foreman, through the woods on the south side of 

 Avery Island and heard a thrashing and floundering in a 

 swampy pond some little distance from us. We thought a 

 cow had gotten bogged, and hitched our horses, going as 

 quickly as possible towards where we heard the sound. The 

 noise had ceased before we got off our horses, but as we had 

 taken note of the direction, we hurriedly followed the line, 

 and soon came to a spot at the edge of the pond where the 

 water was stirred up, covered with bubbles and the bushes 

 and growth on the bank were mashed and muddy. The tracks 

 of a large deer and of a large alligator were very plain, and 

 anyone could read by the signs what had happened. The 

 deer had gone to the water to drink, and an alligator had 

 caught it by one front leg and rolled with it until the deer 

 had become exhausted, and had then pulled it under the 

 water. In July, 1933, I killed this alligator; it measured 



