Question:

Alligators in the Sewer! an urban legend?

by Guest2181 | 12 years, 9 month(s) ago

It was once a fad among New Yorkers vacationing in Florida to bring back baby alligators for their children to raise as pets. The infant gators were destined to grow and outlive their cuteness, sad to say, at which point their desperate owners would flush them down the toilet to get rid of them.

Some of these hastily disposed-of creatures survived in the dank Manhattan sewer system and bred, the story goes, producing scattered colonies of full-grown alligators deep below the streets of New York City. Their descendants live down there to this day, hidden from human eyes apart from the occasional impromptu sighting by sewer workers. According to some reports the animals are blind and afflicted with albinism, having dwelt so long in constant darkness that they have lost their eyesight and the pigment in their hides. Some, they say, have grown to enormous size.

Tags: Alligators, legend, SEWER, Urban

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Merlyn

according to Robert Daley's 1959 book, The
World Beneath the City, a colony of alligators had settled comfortably into
the sewers of New York. It was in 1935 that the animals were first reported
to Superintendent of Sewers Teddy May. At first, May refused to believe
reports from his inspectors that they were being menaced by the
sub-terrainian reptiles. "I says to myself," May recalled in Daley's book,
"them guys been drinking in there." May was so sure that the allegations of
alligators were false that he refused to approve reports mentioning the
animals. He also sent men to watch the inspectors to see how they are
getting a hold of alcohol on the job. When no reports of smuggled whiskey
appeared, May decided to take a look at the claims himself. "I'll go down
there and prove to youse guys that there ain't no alligators in my sewers,"
May said.

Once he examined the situation close at hand, however, May had a change of
heart. He saw a number of alligators himself. Most were about two feet in
length and lived in the smaller pipes that emptied into the trunk lines
below major streets. Mays, having realized the gators were a real problem,
started a program to get rid of them. Many were killed by rat poison, others
were shooed into the trunk lines where the rapidly flowing water carried
them out to sea. A few were killed by overzealous sewer inspectors using .22
rifles and pistols in what must have been one of the strangest sub-terrain
hunts ever. According to Daley's book, all the gators were dead in a few
months.

It seems this account from Daley's book might well be the source of the 60's
urban legend. Is the story true, though? Much of Daley's book comes from
stories told by Teddy May. May, a colorful character with an active
imagination, had a reputation for embellishing stories. This leads some
skeptics to believe that the gator story in The World Beneath the City might
be complete fiction.
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