Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — About Alligators’ Nests. [ARTICLE]

About Alligators’ Nests.

Alligators’' nests resemble haycocks more than anything else to which they can be compared. They average about four feet in height, and about five feet in diameter, and are constructed of grasses and herbage. First the mother ’gator deposits one layer of eggs on a mortar-like floor, and having covered this with a stratum of mud and herbage about eight inches thick, lays another set of eggs upon that, and so on to the top, there being commonly from 100 to 200 eggs in a nest. With their tails the parents then beat down the tall grass and weeds to prevent the approach of unseen enemies. The female watches her eggs until they are hatched by the heat of the sun, and then takes her brood under her own care, defending them and providing for their subsistence. Doctor Lutzemburg, of New Orleans, once packed one of these nests for shipment to St. Petersburg, but the young hatched out before they started on the long voyage, and were kept about the doctor’s premises, running all over the house, up and down stairs, whining like young puppies.—[New York News.