Well, it wasn't in the sewers but maybe that's where it had been living. A four-foot-long alligator was rescued from Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Park Lake over the weekend. Unfortunately, the reptile was in ill health, due in part to the bitter cold weather. The good news is that it's now recovering at the Bronx Zoo.
According to wildlife officials, the gator was likely a pet that some idiot (my words) released into the wild. From The Guardian:
Authorities rescue a handful of alligators each year, "typically former pets that have been abandoned after having outgrown their cute phase," the New York Times reported.
They are also among the most prominent New York urban legends, with the belief persisting that they inhabit the metropolis's sewer system. However, this myth does appear to hold some truth: on 9 February 1935, a group of teens in East Harlem "spied an alligator down a storm drain and then lassoed and hauled it up with a clothesline", the Times reported.
The alligator nipped at the boys. They killed it with shovels.
This incident resulted in the headline "Alligator Found in Uptown Sewer". New York City historian Michael Miscione told the newspaper how this might have bolstered the sewer-alligator myth.
