When I showed up at the marsh on a recent morning I saw an alligator with some sort of animal in it's mouth. As the alligator burst up out of the water and began tossing it's prey around I realized the gator had a raccoon. The alligator continued to struggle for quite a while with the perplexing problem of how to eat a fairly large mammal which can not be gulped down whole. The gator was still dragging his prize catch around the marsh when I left later in the afternoon.