ALLIGATOR PATROL

[Dave Monroe]

>From Vaughn L. Glasgow, A Social History of the
American Alligator (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1991), Ch. 1, "Lost in the Myths of Time: American
Alligator Legends," pp. 1-23 ...

  "The best-known twentieth-cnetury American alligator
legend asserts that vactioning Manhattaners brought
home large numbers of live souvenir baby alligators
from Florida and flushed them into the sewers of New
York City when it became apparent they wwee not
suitable appartment dwellers.  There the 'gators
allegedly grew to large sizes, feeding on rats,
terrorizing sewer workers, and occasionally emerging
from their underground haunts to spread panic in the
streets.  Some versions sid the alligators, like cave
animals, had become blind and white, having lost sight
and pigmentation from generation of living in totl
darkness.
   "This choice example of urban folklore seemingly
finds its origins in a 1953 report in The New York
Times that a large live alligator was fished out of
the sewer by youngsters on 123rd Street near teh
Harlem River....   A variant story was reacalled by
Sewer Commissioner  Teddy May.  Reported in 1959 by
Robert Daley, it said that alligators in the two-foot
range had been discovered in Manhattan sewers in the
1930s, but this infestation had been eradicated fully
by 1937.
   "In his novel V[.] (published in 1963 but set in
the mid-1950s), writer Thomas Pynchon devoted an
entire chapter to the alligator patrol at work in the
New York City sewer system, building on May's account.
 Folklorist Loren Coleman judged that Pynchon 'brought
this tale into modern popular culture as non one
before him had.'  The story continued to grow and to
provide a subject for comment." (pp. 16-17)

See V., Ch. V, "In which Stencil nearly goes West with
an alligator" ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0010&msg=50179

And see as well ...

Robert Daley, The World Beneath the City (1959)

http://www.sewergator.com/lit/world_beneath_the_city.htm

Siegel, Joel.  "The Sewer Alligators."
   New York Daily News, June 18, 2002, p. 55.

http://www.sewergator.com/news/nydn20020618.htm

Coleman, Loren.  "Alligators-in-the-Sewers: A
   Journalistic Origin."  Journal of American
   Folklore, No. 92 (1979).

As well as ...

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/legends/bl-alligators.htm

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_339.html

http://www.snopes.com/critters/lurkers/gator.htm

http://www.unmuseum.org/sgator.htm

Also ...

John Quincy Adams
1825-1829

An Alligator given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette
and Silkworms belonging to Mrs. Louisa Adams

http://www.presidentialpetmuseum.com/whitehousepets-4.htm

The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0061749/

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