The Alligator War by Horacio Quiroga — Read

It was a very big river in a region of South America that had never been visited by white men; and in it lived many, many alligators -- perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand. For dinner they ate fish, which they caught in the stream, and for supper they ate deer and other animals that came down to the water side to drink. On hot afternoons in summer they stretched out and sunned themselves on the bank. But they liked nights when the moon was shining best of all. Then they swam out into the river and sported and played, lashing the water to foam with their tails, while the spray ran off their beautiful skins in all the colors of the rainbow.

These alligators had lived quite happy lives for a long, long time. But at last one afternoon, when they were all sleeping on the sand, snoring and snoring, one alligator woke up and cocked his ears -- the way alligators cock their ears. He listened and listened, and, to be sure, faintly, and from a great distance, came a sound: _Chug! _ _Chug! _ _Chug! _