THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 55 



other substances, and if these are not too large, pays no 

 attention to them, but swallows them together with its 

 prey. 



Alligators are death on hogs, and during the days before 

 they had been hunted to an appreciable extent, it was im- 

 possible to raise hogs with any success in the districts where 

 alligators were plentiful. At one time I placed a large 

 number of hogs on a ridge in one of our overflow marshes, 

 building for them a considerable pen in which a small 

 amount of feed was spread once a day in order to get the 

 hogs used to seeing people and used to coming to a central 

 point for food. This pen was about one hundred feet from 

 the nearest stream and under a group of large live-oak 

 trees. On three different occasions the man who fed the 

 hogs reported that he saw evidences of alligators having 

 been in the pen during the previous night, and of having 

 captured one or more hogs. The evidence of a consider- 

 able battle and the marks of the alligator's body and feet 

 together with blood were signs enough to tell what had 

 happened. The outcome of this experiment of raising 

 hogs in the marsh was that the alligators got so many of 

 them, it was not profitable, so was abandoned. 



During the Winter alligators take no food, being dor- 

 mant, so no damage is done to migratory wild fowl. During 

 the Summer, however, they will catch any bird or animal 

 that they can reach. I have had Canada Geese, Blue Geese 

 and White-fronted Geese as well as Syrus Cranes and Af- 

 rican Crown Cranes caught and killed by alligators, and 

 sometimes the alligators who did the killing were not more 

 than four feet long, and the birds they destroyed were far 

 too large for them to swallow. 



In feeding, alligators make no attempt to kill their prey 

 with their tails as one would infer from reading the records 

 of those who have written about the alligator. They use 

 their powerful tails only when their intended prey is in 

 such a position that it cannot be readily grasped with its 



