Life and Death

Along side Highway 87 in Sabine Pass, TX (as you may have noticed I spend quite a bit of time in this area) I came upon the sun-bleached, scattered bones of an alligator. The skeleton was not whole only consisting of the lower jaw and a few leg bones. It appeared to have been a large one also, because one of the jaw bones measured near 22". Most of the teeth were missing except a few which I collected. Not far from this site I was fortunate to run into a live four foot juvenile alligator in a shallow ditch.It would slowly rise to the surface and suddenly sink into the muck as I would approach. Its mottled brown coloration allowed it to blend in well with the murky bottom of the ditch allowing it to literally disappear each time it would submerge. Minutes later its beady eyes would break the surface and look intently in my direction. There was plenty of food to sustain it in the form of frogs which were hopping everywhere along the fringes of the waterway.