Phil Lanoue Photography

This has always been one of my favorite series. We were watching a baby alligator moving around the swamp among the duckweed. The little guy could not have been more than a foot long. It was clearly hunting for a meal, trying to learn how to be a big gator just like his mom taught him. We saw it lunge at a small frog and miss. Froggy got away. Then we saw the little youngster plunge it’s head under water and surface with something in his tiny jaws. That something turned out to be an insect, likely a cicada. Well our little alligator came up out of the water with the same look and attitude that a full grown gator has with a huge catch! It may have only been a bug, but for this little guy it was a meal and a continuing lesson on how to survuve in the wild and grow up to maybe, one day, be king of the swamp.