Alligator perishes aged approx 84; may have met Slothrop while scuttling around in the Zone

[Cometman]

The image of an alligator scuttling through the shadows of the shattered streets of wartime Berlin could be straight out of the last part of Gravity's Rainbow.
posted by Harvey
Saturn, RIP  
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Saturn, RIP
 
'The last German prisoner of war'
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Saturn (alligator)

American alligator residing in the Moscow Zoo

Saturn (1936 – 22 May 2020) was an American alligator residing in the Moscow Zoo. He was the subject of an urban myth that he was previously Adolf Hitler's "pet alligator".




Quick facts: Other name(s), Species …
Born in Mississippi, Saturn was soon brought to Germany, residing at the Berlin Zoological Garden. It was here that his association with Adolf Hitler originated, as Hitler reportedly enjoyed visiting the zoo and especially liked the alligator. However, while Hitler may have viewed Saturn at the zoo, he was never Hitler's personal pet. During World War II, the Berlin Zoo was destroyed, but Saturn was discovered by British soldiers, who then gave the alligator to the Soviets in 1946. He lived at the Moscow Zoo until 22 May 2020, when he died of old age.

Physical description

Saturn was described as having been 2 to 3.5 meters long, and weighed 200 kilograms (441 pounds). Like the majority of alligators, he had green scales, a broad mouth, and yellow eyes.

Biography

Saturn was hatched in the wild in the American state of Mississippi in 1936. He was captured that year and was shipped to Berlin, where he was brought to the Berlin Zoological Garden. It was from this period that the popular rumor emerged that Saturn was Adolf Hitler's "pet". This may have originated with the author Boris Akunin, a Russian writer who hypothesized in an article that this may have been the case. In actuality, he was not Hitler's personal pet, as he was on public display at the zoo. However, some sources report his display at the zoo as being part of a personal menagerie of Hitler's, while Dmitry Vasilyev, a veterinarian at the Moscow Zoo, contends that while Saturn was not Hitler's pet, the two certainly came into contact, as Hitler was known to have visited the Berlin Zoo on occasion.

During World War II, much of the Berlin Zoo was destroyed. Of the zoo's 16,000 animals, only 96 survived. When the aquarium building was destroyed by a bomb on 23 November 1943, 20 to 30 alligators and crocodiles were killed. Press reports documented that the streets near the aquarium were littered with alligator and crocodile corpses, but that some, including Saturn, had survived and were wandering through the city in search of food.

At the close of the war, the area where the Berlin Zoo is located came under the jurisdiction of the British Zone of Occupation. In 1946, British soldiers discovered Saturn, and brought him to Leipzig, then part of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, where they gave Saturn to the Soviets. While the exact details of how Saturn came to Russia are unknown since the Moscow tourist office burnt down in the 1950s, it is known that the Red Army transported Saturn, along with an Indian python, to Moscow in July 1946, and brought him to live in the Moscow Zoo. When the alligator arrived at the Moscow Zoo, he was instantly a popular attraction, as there were only two crocodiles at the zoo and no other alligators. His German origins earned him the nickname 'Hitler', but he was later given the name 'Saturn'. In 1993, when Russian tanks were moving down the Garden Ring after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Saturn cried out because of the vibrations, which a zookeeper thinks reminded him of the Battle of Berlin.

In the 1950s, the United States gave the Soviet Union a younger, female alligator as a gift. She was named Shipka, and she and Saturn began mating, but they did not produce any offspring as all Shipka’s eggs were infertile. Shipka, who was thirteen years younger than Saturn, later died, and Saturn was so distressed by her death that he refused food for a time. By 2005, Saturn had a new mate, who was then thirty years old.

In his time at the Moscow Zoo, Saturn had several narrow escapes from death. In the 1980s, a slab of concrete fell from the aquarium's ceiling into the alligator enclosure, but luckily for Saturn, he had made his way to a protective niche beforehand. In 1990, a new aquarium building was built, but Saturn resisted the move, refusing to eat for four months and came close to perishing. Once, a drunk visitor threw a boulder on his head to wake him up, after which zoo veterinarians fought to keep him alive for months. Another time, a group of tourists threw glass bottles at Saturn, injuring him. After these incidents, the enclosure was made more secure with the addition of a thick glass wall. In the 2010s, Saturn once again stopped eating, this time for nearly a year. Zoo staff took blood samples for analysis, and injected him with vitamins to try to keep him alive. He eventually resumed eating.

In more recent times, Saturn spent much of his time sleeping. He ate a diet of fish, rabbits, and rats twice a week. Vladimir Kudryavtsev, the head of the Moscow Zoo's reptile department, said that not many visitors knew of Saturn's eventful history. Zoo staff only related Saturn's German origins to groups of visiting schoolchildren. When school classes came, the zookeepers allowed children to stick the end of a broomstick into the enclosure, which was safe because Saturn was generally peaceful. His only violent incident occurred in 1970, when he tried to bite an inexperienced warden who had tried to feed him by hand.

In 2015, the Moscow Zoo renovated the Terrarium, where the alligator enclosure is located. A new interior and reconstructed enclosure was completed, and Saturn returned to public display. Also in 2015, Saturn was sponsored by the French clothing company Lacoste, whose logo is a crocodile.

The Moscow Zoo announced that Saturn had died at the age of around 84 on 22 May 2020.