Br’er Cresey was standing back of the delivery window, sorting mail from the 2:10 train. We eases in at the back door and lays a three-foot ’gator just back of his heels and eases out again. Directly the ’gator goes to blowing. A ’gator’s the blowingest thing I know of. ’Tain’t rightly a blowing, nor yet a sighing, nor even a groaning—you know the way it sounds. It’s a damn peculiar sound—partickler in a post office. Cresey looks around and sees nothing. Directly the ’gator heaves another. Cresey looks down between his legs and there’s the alligator bopping his lips and blowing.

Now, Cresey come out from behind that delivery window like a man with ants in his breeches. He squealed and whinnied like a Maud mule, and when he sees me and Raymond, he goes to cussing. It’s a pure treat to hear Br’er Cresey cussing. He calms down when we takes the ’gator off. He don’t know we’d only moved it to the back of the express wagon. The rest ain’t so funny. He was so mad, and scairt, too, when he steps on the ’gator in the express wagon, he just picks it up by the tail and pitches it. I happens to be the first thing in the way, and when Br’er Cresey pitches the alligator, bless Katy if it don’t land on me and get all wropped around my neck. And I don’t enjoy that much more’n Cresey.

When I was a young un, I fooled with alligators a little. I used to go with Rance Deese when he’d go hunting ’em. A little old shirt-tail boy, here I’d go barefooted across the flat-woods with Rance. You didn’t never know there was alligators in the flat-woods? Why, sure, there’s alligator caves there. Ain’t you noticed there’s always cypress ponds in a flat-woods? The ’gators travels in from the lakes and creeks to them and builds theirselves caves. Like a gopher hole, only bigger. They dig ’em in the pond bank, under the water. A ’gator cave’s about three feet across and anywhere from six to fifteen feet deep, according to the ’gator’s size and notions. He generally likes to holler it out so he can roll over in it. A ’gator’s the very devil for rolling.

You take down around Fort McCoy in the pine. Look and you’ll see a little piece of water. It’ll lead off some way. You’ll see in the mud where the ’gator comes up and suns hisself. In a dry time, them cypress ponds in the flat-woods goes dry, all excepting the ’gator caves. They’re easy found. If you’re aiming to catch the big ’gator, you take a hook on a pole and job it down. The ’gator’ll bite it. You pull him out and kill him and skin him. ’Gator hides is worth about two-eighty-five right now for seven-foot or better. I’ve seen ’em go to four and a half.