We’re back with another edition of Urban Legend: Fact or Fiction. In this chapter, we are heading to the sewers of New York in search of alligators.
The Story
Did you know that the sewers of New York City are absolutely teaming with blind, albino, alligators? What happens is kids get baby alligators as Christmas presents, or on vacations to places like Florida. When these reptiles inevitably grow too big the child or parents flush it down the toilet. The thing is, some survive the trip through the plumbing and end up living in the sewers. This practice has been going on for so long that it has bred a race of alligators who have adapted to never seeing sunlight. It’s so bad the sewage workers all carry guns in case they encounter any at work.
Variants
Unlike many of the other legends we’ve looked at, the song more or less remains the same on this tail. The main details here are that a child gets an alligator that they have no idea how to care for. Once they become overwhelmed by how big gators get, they dispose of the animal in some water-based way. Most versions have the poor animal being flushed down the toilet to kill it, other times the desperate parents/child cut out the middleman and abandon it directly into the sewers. While the logic in this choice is never laid out, our guess would be they believe the animal will survive this method of disposal. [Spoiler alert: they can’t]
The only other major change seems to be how the animal was obtained but it’s normally as a gift or acquired on a trip, with Florida being a popular point of origin. Some versions will even get specific and say they were given out as prizes at Coney Island since the legend almost always takes place in New York. Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel “V” includes a version where Macy’s was selling them for 5 cents a piece. This version also explains that they survive off eating rats found in the sewers.
One of the most over-the-top versions I found said that there was also white marijuana growing in the sewers of New York due to how much gets flushed. The reason every pothead wasn’t down there trying to harvest it was due to the albino alligators swimming around down there. There is a telling that took this one step further and added the fetuses flushed down toilets into the equation. The result is that reefer-smoking kids riding alligators are what produce the white smoke that sometimes comes out of manhole covers. Obviously, no one believes this version outside of the possible child who believes any schoolyard tall tale. But is the addition of small children and Mary Jane THAT much more far-fetched than the original yarn?
Moral
The obvious moral here is that pets are a huge responsibility, especially exotic ones, they should under no circumstance be given as a gift. Let alone as a gift to a young child who proably doesn’t understand how to care for them. The iterations where the child flushes the animal also imply the kid may be too young to understand the difference between life and death. In the versions where the parents do it, it could be due to outlandish levels of ignorance, but it’s normally framed as a cruel and desperate act.
Weaving such a wild tale to prove a point that many would consider common sense may seem like a long way to go. We’d like to remind our readers of the old saying “Common sense isn’t so common.” An alarming amount of individuals don’t seem to understand the difference between animals raised in captivity and out in the wild. An example of this can be found with house cats, every year countless felines are abandoned outside by their owners. Many of them with the belief that a cat will revert to its natural instincts and survive just fine. The truth is, that most cats subjected to this fate do not live because they have no idea how to survive in the wild.
Pop Culture
The alligators in the sewers legend is often referred to as one of New York’s most enduring bits of folklore. So of course it has numerous references in pop culture, below are a few notable examples.
- 1975 – “Croatoan” by Harlan Ellison – This short story tells the alligators being ridden by flushed fetuses version of this legend. But it omits the aforementioned white strain of marijuana.
- 1976 – “Croc” by David James – In this novel, a crocodile has been living in the New York City sewers for years. When two workers go down to investigate a blockage, the croc bites one of them. The other worker escapes only to be coaxed back down to try to shoot and kill the animal.
- 1982 – “Daredevil” issue #180 “The Damned” – Daredevil is asked to investigate an unhoused woman in an abandoned subway tunnel that looks like the missing Vanessa Fisk. While he searches for her, Daredevil and Ben Urich are captured by a group of unhoused people, who bring them before the Sewer King. The King feeds them to an alligator that he has raised ever since it was found, flushed down a toilet as an infant.
- 1980 – “Alligator” – This movie moves the legend to the sewers of Chicago. The twist is this gator grew enormous after it ate the corpses of dogs that had been given illegal growth hormones. It has since turned its appetite towards eating humans. The film spawned the sequel “Alligator II: The Mutation” in 1991 starring Dee Wallace and Steve Railsback.
- 1981 – “Hill Street Blues” episode “Gatorbait” – A member of the city council takes the alligators in the sewers urban legend so seriously that they orchestrate a SWAT Team to conduct an annual hunt for them. Bemused by the situation, detectives LaRue and Washington get a convincing foam-rubber model alligator, strap it to a skateboard, and launch it toward the search team. Late in the episode the team’s leader slams a box full of the shot-up pieces of the foam-rubber gator on Captain Furillo’s desk and demands he do something.
- 1988 – “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” – The character Leatherhead is an alligator who ended up in the city sewers where he was exposed to the same mutagen as the turtles, resulting in him growing into a lizard person. The character first appeared in “Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” issue #6 which first came out in August 1988.
- 1989 – “All Dogs Go to Heaven” – Has a musical number sung by King Gator who lives in the sewers and is worshiped by the rats. Nostalgia Critic fans may also remember this as the scene that birthed the phrase “Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.”
- 1989 – “The Simpsons” various episodes – This legend has been referenced in the episodes titled “Marge in Chains,” “A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love,” “Treehouse of Horror XV – The Ned Zone,” “A Tree Grows in Springfield,” and “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII: Death Tome.”
- 1992 – “Candyman” – This tale is briefly discussed with students bringing up multiple versions set in places like Miami and New York City. Trevor Lyle, husband of the main character Helen Lyle, points to the discrepancies as an example of how the details are always shifting in folklore.
- 1994 – “The X-Files” episode “The Host” – A sewage worker claims he caught a gator on the job a few years ago. He also theorizes that the monster they are hunting maybe someone’s pet python that was flushed.
- 1999 – “Futurama” episode “I Second That Emotion” – Bender, Fry, and Leela meet the mutants living in the sewers. Fry asks if the legendary sewer gators are real; they aren’t, they’ve only got crocodiles. When they grow too large, the mutants flush the crocs into the sub-sewer.
- 2000 – “Batman” issue #577 “Mike and Allie” – When the caped crusader’s Batcave becomes infested with rats he tracks the source down to the sewers. During this investigation, he finds a blind girl who ran away from home and lives with a group of sewer gators after her abusive foster parent flushed her pet down the toilet. She has since grown close enough to the gators to develop a psychic link with them.
- 2001 – “The Philosophical Strangler” by Eric Flint – [This book is part of the larger “Joe’s World” series.] The protagonists are forced to navigate a sewer, which is home to a giant troll who mostly eats the baby alligators that people keep flushing.
- 2001 – “Life Underground” by Tom Otterness – This is a bronze sculpture that depicts an alligator coming out of a manhole to drag off a figure with a money bag for a head. It was installed at the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue station as a part of a public art series.
- 2001 – Radiohead’s “Fog” – a B-side on some versions of their album “Knives Out” album has lyrics referencing this legend; “Baby alligators in the sewers grow up fast. Grow up fast.”
- 2002 – “The Fairly OddParents” episode “Ruled Out” – Local legend has it that the Dimmsdale Sewer Gator has 800 teeth and eats anything that moves. Giving us the line “It’s violent and educational, but mostly violent! Yay, violence!”
- 2002 – “Mystery Hunters” episode “Sewer Gators, Dragons” – Christina heads to New York City to investigate reports of alligators living in the sewers.
- 2005 – “City of the Dead” by Brian Keene – [This book is part of “The Rising” series.] Zombie alligators attack some fleeing humans as they go through the sewers.
- 2006 – “The Wild” – Centers around escaped zoo animals who at one point meet some sewer gators. However, in this instance, the alligators are not menacing and help our heroes find their way to the Statue of Liberty.
- 2007 – “Supernatural” episode “Tall Tales” – An animal researcher is devoured by a sewer gator after sticking his hand down the drain to get a gold watch at the bottom. The mythical creature was created by The Trickster because the researcher was involved in animal testing.
- 2012 – “The Dark Knight Rises” – When Gordon tells his superiors about Bane hiding out in the sewers, they mock him by asking if he saw any giant alligators. This dialogue pulls double duty as a nod to his urban legend and the DC Comics villain Killer Croc.
- 2013 – “Archer” episode “Midnight Ron” – While Ron thinks the idea of mutants like in the movie “CHUD” living in the sewers is impossible, he insists that alligators live down there. The idea freaks Archer out due to his fear of alligators.
- 2014 – “Robot Chicken” episode “Villains in Paradise” – Captain Cold flushes Starro down the toilet. Brainiac complains; “You shouldn’t flush those things. That’s how New York got giant alligators in the sewers.” Captain Cold says that it is just an urban legend. Before Killer Croc chimes in “Oh, you think so?” before a long awkward pause.
- 2014 – “Sharknado 2: The Second One” – A giant gator is spotted in the sewer, but it’s soon eaten by a shark.
- 2016 – “The Secret Life of Pets” – Has the “Flushed Pets,” a criminal organization of former pets living in the sewers, who have sworn revenge against humans. One of their members is an alligator.
- 2016 – “Suicide Squad” – Killer Croc’s room is designed to resemble a sewer.
- 2018 – “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” – The Baryonyx, a carnivorous dinosaur with elongated jaws that has an exaggerated resemblance to a crocodile, appears from the sewers.
- 2023 – “N.Y.C. Legend” by Alexander Klingspor – New York City unveiled a sculpture paying tribute to this urban legend. The piece is a bronze statue that shows a life-size gator wrapped around a New York City manhole cover. It is on display at Union Square Park in Manhattan. (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/nyc-alligator-sewer-statue-trnd/index.html)
Is it Real?
The short answer here is no. No animal could survive being flushed down a toilet and make its way through the plumbing into a sewer. Even if they somehow did, the drain would lead to the sewage treatment plant where the chemicals would kill it. The water in New York sewers is also far too cold for alligators.
Some cite Teddy May, an alleged New York City sewer official who reported spotting the animals in the 1930s. Robert Daley’s 1959 book “The World Beneath The City” even recounts one of May’s stories about him going down to clear the sewers of these gators. The issue is, that folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand discovered May “had never been commissioner, and, in fact, had delighted in spinning outrageous yarns.”
In a 1982 column for The Times, New York City sewer chief, John T. Flaherty, also denied that there a alligators living in the sewers. He points out that the animals would be likely to succumb to the volume of water rushing through mains during heavy rainfalls. There is also the fact that aside from rats, their main food source “has been, to put it as delicately as possible, predigested.”
While rare, alligators have absolutely been found in sewers, but never in the manner that this legend claims.
Print Sources Used
Proud, James. “Underground Gators.” Urban Legends Bizarre Tales You Won’t Believe, Skyhorse, 2018, p. 209-210.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. “Alligators in The Sewers.” The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, W. W. Norton and Company, 2003, pp. 90-98.
Brunvand, J. H. “Alligators in the sewers.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, W. W. Norton and Company, 2001, pp. 8-9.
Brunvand, J. H. “Alligators in the Sewers.” Too Good to be True: The colossal book of urban legends, W. W. Norton and Company, 2014, pp. 182-185.
