THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 93 



tinued until she had made the circle of the pile four and 

 one-half times, which required almost five hours work. In 

 making this part of the clearing four Alder trees, from two 

 and one-half to three inches in diameter, had been broken 

 off. When these were pulled onto the pile, their trunks 

 were found too large for nest building, so she laid her body 

 across the trunks and tore off the limbs by crushing them 

 in her jaws and with violent shakes of her head. After the 

 limbs were stripped off, the trunks were carried by mouth 

 to the side of the clearing and discarded. Occasionally she 

 would go to the edge of the cleared space and turning her 

 head sidewise would grasp in her jaws a mouthful of what- 

 ever the standing growth might be, and after crushing the 

 stems so caught by strongly squeezing her jaws together, 

 would start backing towards the nest, dragging with her 

 whatever material her jaws held, thus tearing the weaker 

 stems off or up by the roots, and breaking off by violent 

 shakes of her head such stems as were too strong to be got- 

 ten loose otherwise. When this part of the nest-building 

 had been finished, the result was a pile of stems, twigs and 

 leaves, almost round, and about six feet across by about 

 eighteen inches high. By continually crawling over this 

 mound and working its material from the edge to the centre 

 it was well packed and flat on top. The nest-builder then 

 left off work and went back to the pond, and I also called 

 it a day. 



The next morning I was at the nest-blind before sunrise, 

 provided with a lunch and a jug of water, prepared to spend 

 the day. The alligator was not at the nest and did not 

 come to work until 7:35, but when it got light enough to 

 see clearly, I found the nest-building had continued during 

 the night, as the cleared space was considerably larger, and 

 a lot of loose twigs, leaves, briers and dry trash had been 

 piled loosely around the base of the nest-mound. Arriving 

 at the mound, the alligator looked it over holding her head 

 as high as possible while slowly crawling around its base. 



