ALLIGATORS AND WILD TURKEYS
Out in the wild country to the westward of the St. Lucie River the winds
of dawn mass fluffy cumulous clouds along the horizon, and the morning
sun tints these till it seems as if a vast golden fleece were piled
there to tempt westward faring argonauts. Thither I journeyed for nearly
a day, the slow trail ending in a land of enchantment fifteen miles
beyond the nearest outpost of civilization. Most of this trail led
through the dry prairie where short, wire grass grows among widely
scattered, slim pines, the slimness seeming to come rather from lack of
nourishment than youth, for the soil here is but a thin and barren sand.
Then the earth beneath us sank gently and the water rose till the good
sorrel horse was splashing to his knees in water that was crystal clear
and that deepened in spots till the hubs rolled on its surface. Schools
of tiny fishes darted away as we splashed on, bream and garfish, bass
and sea trout, spawned no doubt in some branch of the upper waters of
the river and venturing onward in companionable explorations wherever a
half-inch of water might let their agile bodies slip.
We were on the border of “Little Cane Slough,” and we fared on
amphibiously thus some miles farther, coming at last to the country of
islands which was our destination. In the geology of things Florida was
once sea bottom, having been pushed up by a fold in the earth’s strata
which made the Appalachian mountain range. The giant force which raised
these mountains thousands of feet high was nearly spent when it came to
this part of the country and barely succeeded in getting the State above
high tide. Thus the waters subsiding slowly made no extensive erosion.
Yet they did their work and Little Cane Slough was once a river of salt
water flowing out of the surgent State. In its slow, broad passage, the
flood took some surface with it, leaving a bare, sandy bottom in the
main free from any hint of humus in which vegetation might grow. In
other spots it left the surface mud in higher islands of unexampled
fertility.
Some of these islands are scarcely a hundred feet in diameter. Others
measure a half mile or so, but all to-day are covered with a dense
growth of vegetation from grass and shrubs to mighty trees of many
varieties. Hence you have an enchanting mingling of shallow, clear
ponds, grassy and sedgy meadows and wooded islands, a country which all
wild creatures love. The place is marked on the map as a lake. There are
years and times of year when it is that, then drought reaches deep and
the only water you can find is in the alligator holes into which fish
and alligators both crowd till these tenement districts are much
congested.
The sun which had started behind us in our westward race for the golden
fleece of cumulous clouds outdistanced us and sank to victory among
them, big and red with his running, but we camped on one of these
thousand islands. You may venture into haunts of the alligator without
fear. I doubt if there was ever a time when the largest of them would
attack a man, certainly the few that are left wild have a wholesome fear
of him and you must be stealthy of foot and quick of eye to even see
one.
Twenty years ago fifteen footers promenaded from one deep hole to
another, and their broad paths, worn through the thin surface of
fertility, are left still, the grass not yet having found sufficient
foothold to obliterate them. Rarely does one make trips like that
to-day. They all stick too closely to their holes, and so cleverly are
these placed that a screen of bushes or rushes conceals
[Illustration: “My first glimpse came at one of these places”]
the saurian when he is up sunning himself, and he has but to plunge to
find safety.
My first glimpse came at one of these places, a deep pool surrounded by
a growth of flags. Close beside this was a bushy island, and in one
corner of the island was a smaller pool not over a dozen feet in
diameter. Between the two, half screened by the bushes, lay Mister
Alligator enjoying a mid-afternoon nap, but a nap in which he slept with
one eyelid propped up. One gets so used to scaly monsters in the Florida
woods, rough trunks of scrub palmettos that continually simulate saurian
ugliness, that it took me a moment to see him, even when my companion
pointed him out. Surely there could be nothing of life in that inert
stub. But even as I looked there was a most prodigious scrambling of
clawed feet, a swish of a tail so big and husky that it seemed to wag
the alligator, and he was in with a plunge, not into the big pool as I
expected, but with a dive into the little one beneath the bushes, an
action that let me into one of the secrets of alligator housekeeping.
A good part of that afternoon and pretty nearly all of the next day I
spent, with my companion, who has been intimate with alligators for many
years, in wading, often waist deep, in the sunny, clear, tepid water,
from one alligator hole to another, and in that way I learned much of
the real life of the beast. A grown alligator is a huge and
formidable-looking reptile, but so great a fear has he of man that you
have but to show yourself and say “Boo!” and he will make the water boil
in his frantic endeavors to escape. You may go swimming in his private
pool if you will and he will crowd down in the mud of its deepest hole
to escape you. Only when cornered and continually prodded will he show
fight. Then he may bite you with his big mouth or club you with his
bigger tail, but it will be only that he may get an opportunity to get
away. There is much interesting fiction about alligators that eat
pickaninnies or even grown-ups, but I do not believe it has any
foundation in fact.
I found several alligators’ nests, big heaps of thin chopped reeds,
dried leaves and rubbish, in which in midsummer the eggs are laid, white
and with a tough, leathery skin, about as big as a hen’s eggs. Last
year’s eggshells still linger about these nests. The heat and steam of
the sub-tropical swamp hatches the eggs without further trouble on the
part of the mother. She, however, stays not far away and if you wish to
see her you have but to catch one of these lithe, wriggly youngsters
after they are hatched and pinch the tail. The squeak of pain will
usually bring a rush from the big one, though even then the sight of a
man is enough to send her back again in a hurry. The young alligators
are born
[Illustration: “The heat and steam of the sub-tropical swamp hatches the
eggs without further trouble”]
on the banks of the pool in which their mother lives, and they need to
be agile else their father will eat them. As for food, every alligator
hole that I have visited swarms with fish.
Getting the sunlight just right on one of these alligator swimming pools
I have seen, besides great store of small fishes swimming about the
margin, hundreds of broad bream schooling in it, while bass and garfish
two feet long lay in the deeper parts. So far as fish go the alligator
need not go hungry. Often, too, he may get a duck or a heron, coming up
with a snap from beneath the surface before the bird has a chance to
rise from the water. I have seen a raccoon floundering and swimming in
the shallows, his diet no doubt mainly fish, and he himself liable to
capture by the alligator.
But the inner domicile of the alligator is not in the big pool. It is in
the lesser one, and from this he has an entrance to a cave he has dug in
the earth far beneath the bushes. Often you may prod in this cave with a
fifteen-foot pole and not touch the reptile, so deep does it go. This is
his refuge, his hiding-place. In time of danger or in cool weather he
may lie at the bottom of it for days at a time. When he comes out again
it is most circumspectly. He floats craftily just to the surface and
lets his nostrils and his eyes, which are placed just right for this
feat, come above the surface, while all the rest of him is submerged.
If you are familiar with alligators you may recognize these at a
considerable distance; if not you will surely think them floating bits
of bark or rubbish. Yet in time of low water this very refuge of the
animal is his undoing. The alligator hunter comes to the pool armed with
a long iron rod with which he jabs and prods till he finally drives his
quarry to the surface to his death. Sometimes this iron has a hook on
the end with which the reluctant beast is hauled out. Such hunting means
close quarters and is not without excitement.
In times not long past, this sort of pot-hunting was much followed. Now
the hunter most often “jacks” for his game, paddling at night with a
bullseye lantern attached to the front of his hat like a miner’s lamp.
The beast in stupid curiosity watches the gleam of this light and the
hunter sees it reflected from his eyes. Curiously enough, you may see
this reflected glare well only when yourself wearing the lantern. You
may stand beside the man wearing it and never get the reflection,
however he turns his head. The reason for this, no doubt, is that the
eyes of the watching beast are focused on the light alone and hence send
its rays directly back. Now and then the jack-hunter grunts mysteriously
from deep within himself. This ventriloquism is supposed to be an
imitation of the call of a young alligator and is used to lure the old
one.
But not for fish and alligators merely is this bewitching country of
islands set in the middle of Little Cane Slough. Here are innumerable
flocks of the Florida little blue heron, ranging in numbers from three
to fifty, wading and feeding mornings and evenings, resting at midday on
tops of dead stubs, where the young birds, still in white plumage, are
most conspicuous objects. The bald eagles that had ten bushels or so of
nest in a big pine just east of our camp must find these birds easy
game. Nor are the white youngsters, seemingly, unaware of this. Their
blue elders often sit hunched up, asleep, but these hold the head erect
and crane the neck this way and that, as if perpetually wondering whence
trouble might come. Among these birds I saw for the first time the
change of color from youth to maturity, from white to blue, going on.
There were birds in the flocks that had blue backs and wing coverts
while still white underneath.
All about among these islands are well beaten trails of other creatures
than alligators. The range cattle make some of them, but not all. In
some you may see the duplex-pointed hoof-marks of deer. Some are
scratched out by the hurrying claws of raccoons. In many, along the
grassy edges I found the wide, dignified print of that king of wild
birds, the wild turkey. Long and stealthily I prowled these trails
hoping to come upon this majestic bird when feeding and thus see him at
his work, but in this I was unsuccessful. The turkey feeds mainly in
early forenoon and late afternoon, not leaving his perch as a rule till
the sun is above the horizon, lurking among the bushes on high ground
during the heat of the day, filling his crop again before sundown and
flying heavily to his roost before dark. Just now his food is mainly
succulent new grass with which he fills his crop until it will hold no
more, fairly swelling him up in front like a pouter pigeon. There were a
gobbler and two or three hens near-by--how near we were not to suspect
until later; but we saw only the trail of these, not a feather of them
did we glimpse, follow their tracks as we might.
It was late in the afternoon and we were a mile and a half from camp
when we heard the first turkey voice. It was that of a lone gobbler and,
just by chance, we stopped knee-deep in the grassy lagoon on the margin
of an island which held his favorite roost, a limb of a big pine
standing among deciduous trees. To this, from the other side he came. No
doubt he had been picking grass on the other margin of the lagoon in
which we stood, now he was headed for home and calling.
At this time of year there are great battles between gobblers for
possession of hens. This gobbler seems to have been a defeated and
compulsory bachelor, yet he gobbled away as if a whole barnyard was at
his back, lifting his twenty-five pounds of live weight with rapid beats
of his short, strong wings from the ground to lower limbs, thence higher
and finally to his roost. Never yet, I believe, grew a more magnificent
gobbler than this one, scorned of the fair sex though he was. The level
sun shone upon his bronzed feathers till the radiance of their beauty
fairly dazzled, seeming to flash from him in molten rays as if from
burnished copper. He looked this way and that for those missing hens
that surely ought to be lured into following such radiance. He gobbled
to right and he gobbled to left in mingled defiance and entreaty, but
there was no reply. Then he strutted and displayed all his magnificence.
He spread the wide fan of his copper-red tail, drooped his wings till
they hung below the limb and puffed out all his feathers, silhouetted
against the pale rose of the sunset. Then he said “Pouf!” once or twice
in a half-hissing, sudden grunt that sounded as if it came from the
bunghole of an empty barrel. It had that sort of contemptuous hollow
ring to it. This he varied with gobbling for some time. If afterward he
put his head beneath his wing and forgot his loneliness in slumber I
cannot say, for the south Florida sun whirled suddenly beneath the
horizon and took his roses and gold with him. The night was upon us and
only the thinnest of new moons lighted our way in the long splash back
to camp.