There are full-grown alligators in the sewers of New York City. They were pets brought back from vacations in Florida, then flushed down toilets when their owners grew tired of keeping them. (1960s)
Possibly true. . . . Between 1932 and 1938 the New York Times printed several reports of alligators caught around the city — in the Bronx River, in New Jersey, in the East River, and even in a Brooklyn subway station. On August 16, 1938, the paper told of a sudden bonanza in alligator fishing in Huguenot Lake in New Rochelle, just to the north of the city. Five of the reptiles had been caught by fishermen over the weekend. Major Elvin L. Barr managed to land two, using ordinary bass flies. He theorized that the creatures “had been put there by some resident who had bought them in Florida as pets and then tired of them.” Did we see those wondering eyebrows go up? But wait. A story even more crucial to the rumor appeared on February 10, 1935, under the headline “Alligator Found in Uptown Sewer.” According to the Times reporter, several boys on East 123rd Street were shoveling snow into a manhole
