12 The Alligator and Its Allies 
of the animal before being seen or heard by him. 
At the first alarm he slides quietly or plunges 
quickly into the muddy water, and the hunter 
must wait long if he expects to see the ’gator come 
to the surface. 
The opening of the cave is always below the 
surface of the water, but it is possible that there 
may be a subterranean chamber that is not com- 
pletely filled with water. How the animal is 
gotten from his cave will be described later. Ac- 
cording to some writers the alligator retires to his 
cave to hibernate during the cooler winter months. 
This is possibly true in the more northerly limits 
of his range. It is well known that if kept in cool 
water the alligator will lie dormant and refuse all 
food for months at a time. The writer has had 
young alligators in captivity, under these condi- 
tions, that refused food from late in the autumn 
until nearly the first of April. 
The proprietor of one of the largest alligator 
farms in the country says: “Our alligators stop 
eating the first week in October and do not begin 
to eat until the latter part of April. We have 
experimented with our stock to see if we could get 
them to eat in the winter, and found that by keep- 
ing the water in the tanks at a certain temperature 
they would eat, but we found out that the warm 
water would make their bowels move, and that 
they would not eat enough to keep themselves up, 
as in the summer, and as a result they would be- 
