“ ’Gator” Stories

Waikato Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1739, 13 April 1916, Page 6

“ ’Gator” Stories

Alligators are numerous in the estuaries and rivers of the Northern Territory, and Mr Alfred Searcy, long the collector of customs at Darwin, North Australia, iu his new book, “In Australian 1 ropics, ’ ’ has jottings about their little ways and peculiarities, as this;— ’Gators like their food high, so deposit on the bottom anything fresh they may secure, and allow it to remain there until it has reached the desired state of putridity. I heard of one nigger escaping after having been deposited at the bottom.

Something like a “near shave,” that

Always the alligators are lying iu wait for something to devour—cowardly beasts which attack only at an advantage. A large, daring beast seized a lithe young black man and was making off with him —

In this horrible and apparently hopeless position the nigger boy kept his presence of mind. He was an Alligator Biver boy, so he must have had a good deal to do with the reptiles at different times. With great calmness and courage the nigger wriggled himself round and managed to insert his thumbs into the eye-sockets of the alligator, ‘ with such force and effect that the brute let go its hold and beat a temporary retreat.

A trick worth knowing, although,fortunately, most of us are never likely to have to try it. Alligators make their nests on the banks of a stream, and the eggs are hatched out by the heat of the atmosphere. That taken u« to another of Mr Searcy's stories— I remember a man who had a lot of given to him, which he put away in a drawer and forgot all about. One evening, hearing a noise, he opened the drawer, and found a lot of little alligators.

There is nothing like a good story, and that’s one.^'Chronicle.”