82 THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 



stomach. Sometimes the alligator will roll and wind the 

 line around its body until it draws itself out on the bank, 

 and its contortions are so powerful that when the line be- 

 comes tightly wound around its body up to the stake or tree, 

 if the alligator is a large one, it will sometimes either break 

 the line or what it is fastened to and temporarily get away, 

 but the hook in its insides is always fatal, and an alligator 

 that has swallowed a hook is sure to die, and usually crawls 

 out on the bank to die. I have a number of times seen 

 alligators, thus hooked, crawl out on the bank and die 

 without any appreciable amount of struggling. 



In the old days when alligators were very plentiful, a 

 crowd of boys and I would take, what we called a red-fish 

 line, being a cotton line about one-fourth inch in diameter, 

 and tie on the end a strong hook, baiting it with a piece of 

 raw meat or a bird, and tie a bottle or cypress stick imme- 

 diately at the hook for a float. We would call an alligator to 

 us as near as possible, and often several would come within a 

 few yards of us, when we would throw the baited hook with 

 its float as near as we could to the head of the largest, several 

 boys keeping hold of the other end of the line, which was 

 usually about forty or fifty feet long. The alligator would 

 grab the bait and float, and if the float was a bottle, would 

 crush it with its jaws as if it was paper, and then swallow 

 the remnants of glass and baited hook. We would then 

 tighten the line and a great battle would ensue, which always 

 ended by our drawing the alligator to the bank and killing 

 it with an axe or other heavy implement. We, in those 

 days, thought this was sport, and I am detailing this in- 

 cident to show how plentiful and unafraid of human beings 

 alligators were in the early Eighties. 



Some alligator hunters have absolutely no fear of alli- 

 gators, claiming that if they are careful they can catch the 

 largest of alligators with their hands. Alpha LeBlanc, 

 who now lives at Avery Island with his large family, has, 

 during the past years, been a famous alligator catcher. He 



