Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1882 — How an Alligator Dines. [ARTICLE]

How an Alligator Dines.

An alligator’s throat is an animated sewer. Everything which lodges in his mouth goes down. He is a lazy dog, and, instead of hunting for something to eat, he lets his victims hunt for him. That is, he lies with great mouth open, apparently dead, like the ’possum. Soon a bug crawls into it, then a fly, then several gnats and a colony of mosquitoes. The alligator doesn’t close his mouth yet. He is waiting for a whole drove of things. He does his eating by wholesale. A little later a lizard will cool himself under the shade of his upper jaw. Then a few frogs will hop up to catch the mosquitoes. Then more mosquitoes and gnats will light on the frogs. Finally a whole village of insects and reptiles settle down for an afternoon picnic. Then all at once there is an earthquake. The big jaw' falls, the

alligator eye, gulps down the Whole menageries and opens his great front door again for more. —-Sunnw South. ■/' i * & H f