Like young turtles just from the shell, the baby alligators make for the water, but unlike the young of the sea-turtles, the saurians have the assistance of their parent, who not unfrequently takes a load of them upon her back.  From the first inception of nest-building until the young are able to take care of themselves, this reptile mother, like the female wild-turkey, resists the encroachments of her mate who would devour, not only the eggs, but his own crawling children.  In fact, if opportunity were offered by the absence of the mother from the nest and the young, his alligatorship would eat up all his progeny, and exterminate his species, without a particle of regret.  He has no pride in the perpetuation of his family, and it is to the maternal instincts of his good wife that we owe the preservation of the alligator.

The young avoid the larger males until they are strong enough to protect themselves, feeding in the mean time upon fish and flesh of every description.  In the water they move with agility, but on land their long bodies and short legs prevent rapid motion.  They migrate during droughts from one slough or bayou to another, crossing the intervening upland.  When discovered on these journeys by man, the alligator feigns death, or at least appears to be in an unconscious state; but if an antagonist approach within reach of that terrible tail, a blow, a sweep, and a snapping together of the jaws prove conclusively his dangerous character.  He is a good fisherman, and can also catch ducks, drawing them by their feet under water.  The dog is, however, the favorite diet of these saurians, and the negroes make use of a crying puppy to allure the creature from the bottom of a shoal bayou within reach of their guns.

Though clad in a coat of thick, bony scales, a well-directed charge of buckshot from a gun, or a lead ball from a musket, will penetrate the body, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary.

The negroes in the Gulf states say that “de ’gators swallows a pine knot afore dey goes into de mud-burrows for de winter;” and the fact that pine knots and pieces of wood are found in the stomachs of these animals at all seasons of the year, gives a shade of truth to this statement.  Even the hardest substances, such as stones and broken bottles, are taken in considerable quantities from the bodies of dead alligators.  Their digestive organs are certainly not sensitive, their nervous systems not delicate, and their intelligence not remarkable.  It gives an alligator but little inconvenience to shoot off a portion of his head with a mass of the brain attached to it; and they have been known to fight for hours with the entire brain removed.