Show iN oi TURE Sij y- y ti tiT T DRAGON OF T TuB C Dangerous Not at all but they are arc rather laz lazy playmates By N S lACK President American Asso Association elation The alligator 1 is a native product or of our southland and ond even now though much reduced from Its lIS primitive abundance Is I still often to tobe tobe tobe be met with In la the swamps of or the gulf states The rhe demand for alligator leather has been the principal cause of Its it decline In numbers Many were shot wantonly by hunters Then too the tho alligator was wa never very fondly cherished by the inhabitant because Its food sometimes Included ed cd pigs pies dogs or other domestic dom i animals which showed a fondness for or the swimming holes which t to o alligator regarded as his own NOT DANGEROUS The Tha supposed danger dancer to human beings however has hos been much exaggerated since Ince the tho people who live JIve and work In Its Ita haunts usually regard It with Indifference Few ew mothers however would care to see their children associating so closely with such a II formidable rep tile us LS this young lady is l petting Alligators lay a or of o white eggs three Inches long by an Inch and a halt holf In width white and un un- un unmarked un marked and with a shell much like that of the egg of ot a 0 duck or goose These eggs egga are oro hidden In a a sort or of r pocket In the bank sometimes sometime con connected with the waterway by n IL sub merged entrance It Is believed that the tho mother remains near the nest to guard It AVOID THEIR ELDERS The Tho eggs ess hatch In about two months and the tho young oung ones one take core care ot of o themselves front from the start Among their enemies are tho the old alligators especially the males but the tho young oung ones one seek the tha shallow streams and thereby increase their expectancy of life Alligators are supposed to live several hundred years and for tor formerly merly grew to be eighteen or twenty twenty ty feet long Ions In these days how how- however however however ever most of them Item meet death at atthe atthe atthe the hand of man before they arc alo very old and an alligator twelve or I thirteen feet long Is a a rarity |