Alligators in the sewers

 

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “Alligators in the sewers? Wasn’t that just a story?”

— Sewer, Gas & Electric, chapter one

 

Though it is assumed by many people to be nothing more than an urban legend, the alligators in the sewers story actually does have some basis in fact—though how much basis in fact is a harder question to answer. In his book The World Beneath the City, Robert R. Daley told the tale of New York City Sewer Superintendent Teddy May, who in the mid-1930s began receiving reports of alligator sightings from his men. May initially assumed that the men had been drinking on duty, but when he went down into the tunnels to check on the matter personally, he saw the alligators too. Outraged, May organized an extermination campaign, and for the next several months his men shot, poisoned, or drowned every ‘gator they could find.

True story? A Cornell University zoologist I spoke to had his doubts, although, noting that the average “alligator” seen by May and his inspectors was only two feet long, he allowed that they might have been caimans, a related member of the crocodile family with a higher tolerance for low temperatures. As for how they got into the sewers, Daley’s explanation is as plausible as any: they could have been abandoned pets that vacationing New Yorkers had brought home from Florida and then discarded once they got too big.

The World Beneath the City is not the only source for New York alligator sightings. Throughout the 1930s, the New York Times carried reports of reptiles seen in, around, and under the city. The most noteworthy of these is the February 10, 1935 capture of a seven-and-a-half-foot ‘gator in Harlem. Other sightings/captures were reported on June 30, 1932, September 12, 1933, June 1, 1937, June 7, 1937, and August 16, 1938.

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