Plucky Boys Author:Dinah Maria Mulock Craik General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1884 Original Publisher: D. Lothrop Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can sele... more »ct from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: A YOUNG ALLIGATOR- CATCHER. CATCHING and raising alligators to sell seems rather queer business for a boy; and yet Jimmie Davis, of Jacksonville, Florida, who is only sixteen years old, makes no small amount of money by so doing. His father is known by the name of " Alligator " Davis, and, as the name implies, is in the same line of trade, having taken his son with him as an assistant since he was eight years old. The father and son live nearly all the time in the swamps, or on the banks of the streams where the alligators are most plentiful, going to town only when they need fresh supplies of provisions, or have a stock of captives to sell. Jimmie has been so observing in his queer trade that he can imitate the cry of an old mother alligator or her young ones, to such perfection that they will come running after him, thinking his voice that of one of the family. There have been times, though, when Jimmie has called altogether too successfully, and has had either the father or the mother come at him, so angry at the deception practised that he has had great difficulty in getting out of the way quickly enough. You must know that large alligators, either alive or stuffed, are purchased by those who make a business of exhibiting curiosities, at prices ranging from ten to fifty dollars for the live ones, and about half that sum for those that have been made to " look alive " by the taxidermist. Young ones are bought by the visitors to Florida, as are the eggs, and the demand for almost everything pertaining to the alligator is so great that Jimmie often earns as much ...« less