Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — Hard to Kill. [ARTICLE]

Hard to Kill.

An alligator’s tenacity of life is remarkable. I have no doubt that when its brain is pierced by a bullet the animal does not long survive, but it sinks into deep water, where it cannot be seen. I never succeeded in killing and bagging an alligator by a shot in the brain. The structure of the skull provides so much protection to the brain, and the bullet might easily be deflected by the hard bones. It was not my vocation to go about killing alligators, but on one occasion I was witness to the great difficulty of taking the animal’s life. We were on a shooting party near the Pointee indigo factory, on the Ganges, and one day when we returned from our morning’s round in the jungles, after deer and always a possible tiger or a wolf, we found that some fishermen had brought in *an alligator about six feet long, securely bound on a bullock cart. The animal was still alive, but had evidently been severely beaten to make him quiet on the bullock cart, so the order was given to tie a stout rope around its loins and to turn it into a small tank to refresh and recover itself while we were taking our baths and our breakfast.

Breakfast over, the alligator was hauled out of the tank, and was quite lively, so that it had to be fastened to a tree. Then operations for killing it began, but bullets from a small rifle or an ordinary twelvebore gun seemed only to irritate it. A Sontal brought a large spear, one of the lato venabula ferro which they use, and drove it down the alligator's throat into its vitals, and this had more effect, while another man got an axe and chopped away at the neck till the head was separated from the body. The body was then cut open, and the heart was lying on the ground by its side, but still the tail continued to move. But here we withdrew, and the mob of Sontals, who had been eagerly waiting, rushed in with their knives and cut up the body and ate everything eatable, so that in a short time there was nothing left but the skin and bones.— [Longman’s Magazine.