The family pushed further southeast across the endless, withered plains. It had been a week since we shook down that cheetah for his lunch, and we'd spent every day of it tailing that same pronghorn herd.
We finally hit a massive, churning river. In the middle of this freezing winter, the water was still rushing with enough force to make your head spin. This was a tributary of the Mississippi, known locally as the "Crocodile Kingdom."
The name wasn't a joke. This stretch of water was the home of the American Alligator—the Alligator mississippiensis.
These things are tanks, averaging 3.5 meters long and weighing 150 kilos of pure, muscle. The riverbed was likely carpeted with them, a hidden empire waiting under the silt.
Every year, thousands of herbivores trek to this exact spot. It's a suicide mission, but they have no choice. To reach the warm, lush Mississippi plains on the other side, they have to cross the Kingdom. And every year, the alligators are right there, waiting for the buffet to deliver itself.
The pronghorn herd reached the steep muddy banks and stopped. They were pacing, frantic and spooked. Even with their limited brainpower, they could smell the death waiting in that murky water.
But as the front of the herd hesitated, the back of the herd absolutely lost it.
We had arrived.
Mom, Dad, and I didn't give them time to think. We hit the back of the line like a freight train, slamming into the panicked animals.
"Gotcha, you little brat!"
I looked down at the juvenile pronghorn pinned under my paws. My fangs sank in, and as the life left it, I felt that familiar rush of relief. For a week, we'd been eating these guys' dust, watching them hop away every time we got close. Now, with their backs to the water, they had nowhere left to run.
Mom and Dad both snagged their own kills. We were so hungry we didn't even bother dragging them to cover; we just started ripping into them right there on the bank.
That was the final straw for the herd. The sight of us shredding their friends triggered a total collapse. The animals in the back started shoving the ones in the front, desperate to get away from the fangs behind them.
"Mreeee~~"
The lead pronghorn let out a sharp cry—the signal to go. He didn't hesitate. He launched himself off the bank and hit the water with a massive splash.
Pronghorns aren't just fast on land; they can swim like hell when their lives depend on it. The leader cut through the current, heading for the far bank. Following his lead, four or five hundred pronghorns swarmed into the river, turning the water into a chaotic, muddy soup of thrashing limbs.
"They're actually going in," I muttered, looking up from my meal. "That's a death sentence."
But that's the math of the wild. The gators can't eat four hundred of them. A few dozen will die so the rest can live. It's not a sacrifice—nobody wants to be the one who gets eaten—but in a crowd that big, everyone just prays they aren't the unlucky ones. If they didn't cross here, they'd have to take a detour that would probably kill even more of them. This was the "choice" that wasn't a choice.
The alligators stayed submerged while the leader crossed. They were waiting for the thick of the herd.
Second one... third one...
Soon, the water was full of bobbing heads. The river was deep enough that only the pronghorns' necks and heads were above the surface, leaving their soft, vulnerable throats exposed to anything swimming underneath.
The gators struck.
An alligator lunged, jaws snapping shut on air as a pronghorn leaped clear. But before it could celebrate, a second gator clamped onto its back leg.
Rows of razor-sharp teeth sank into the meat. The gator didn't just hold on; it put its back into it and started the "Death Roll."
Splash! Thrash!
The water exploded. The pronghorn didn't stand a chance. Its leg bone snapped like a dry branch under the torque of the roll. As it was dragged under, the first gator circled back and clamped onto its neck.
Crack.
The neck snapped, twisting at a sickening angle. The pronghorn went limp and was dragged into the depths.
This same scene was playing out all across the river. Two or three gators would team up on a single target, and it was a wrap. Within minutes, the water was stained red, though the heavy current washed the blood away almost as fast as it spilled.
Even as their friends were being torn to pieces right in front of them, the rest of the pronghorns kept coming. They were even stepping on the submerged bodies of the dead to gain traction.
I sat on the bank, a piece of leg meat hanging from my mouth, absolutely stunned. I'd seen nature documentaries before, but seeing these Cruel Crocodiles in person was something else entirely.
The Ice Age wasn't just about cold. It was also about survival.
The herd is across, but James and the family are still on the "wrong" side.