60 THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 



He had a pistol with him, and shot the alligator from his 

 horse, killing it. On his describing its size to my father 

 and uncles, a four-mule team and wagon was sent to bring 

 it to our house. This alligator measured eighteen feet, five 

 and one-half inches. The third large alligator which I 

 know to have been above eighteen feet was killed by me on 

 January 2, 1890, in a small bayou which had connected 

 Lake Cock with Vermilion Bay. The mouth of this bayou 

 where it had joined the bay had become closed by the '79 

 storm, and at the time I killed this alligator, there was no 

 opening from the bayou into the bay, as the beach ridge 

 had formed across the mouth, and grass had grown in the 

 bayou for perhaps three hundred feet back of the beach. 

 I had started on a goose hunt in a lugger with two as- 

 sistants; being overtaken at dusk without sufficient breeze to 

 go further, we anchored just off the place where Bayou 

 Cock had emptied into Vermilion Bay. As this was a 

 famous duck country, and as the water was shallow, I waded 

 ashore to get some ducks for supper. Walking back into 

 the marsh along the border of the old bayou, I killed a 

 couple of mallards which fell in the grass that had grown up 

 in the bayou. On wading in to retrieve them, I saw in front 

 of me what I thought, in the dim light after sundown, was 

 a partly submerged log. On going up to it, I found it was 

 an enormous alligator almost completely dormant in the 

 cold air and water. I shot it directly through the head and 

 on lifting its head from the muddy water, was convinced 

 that it was the largest alligator I had ever seen. The next 

 morning with my two companions and some rope, we went 

 back to the place where I had killed the alligator, tied the 

 rope around its neck and tried to pull it through the very 

 boggy marsh to the solid bank to skin it, but the three of us, 

 owing to its great size and weight, could not do more than 

 move it a short distance, as when we would exert ourselves 

 to pull on the rope, we would bog down in the soft mud 

 past our knees. I finally gave up trying to get the alligator 



