URBAN FAUNA: The Prospect Park Alligator
Warning: This newsletter contains unrestrained rambling and also photographs and cinematic renderings of very large reptiles.
Hi Bestie!!
I am back from a seven-slash-eight-day trip (if you watch the sunrise at your gate at LAX and think about how it was on your life list when you were 23 because of a brief scene in a Tom Ford movie, does it count as a day?) from Los Angeles but am dedicated to telling you about New York City and its wildlife. We can talk about California’s “ugly trees" (they’re yucca) another time. (They’re not ugly and the fruit tastes like banana.)
I watched ABC 7 news at noon last week and learned belatedly that a four-foot alligator was captured Sunday morning (probably while I watched the sunrise!) in Prospect Park. What is normalish in New Orleans is unusual here. It was the talk of the town within minutes! The Prospect Park Alligator: so hot right now!
(About as far as I got through NYT before it hit me with its paywall.)
The Internet is calling the alligator Godzilla. She has been described as lethargic and "small for an alligator.” She does look slight but four feet is chilling! A bathtub plug was found in her stomach a few days after her rescue, and while I’d argue that Prospect Park is full of trash, it does indicate that she was an apartment dweller before her discovery. The most recent report is that Godzilla is being tube-fed. I hope she gets to live the rest of her days happily in The Bronx Zoo. I am a little worried she won’t make it.
City alligators have a storied history in New York, and days before Godzilla’s discovery, I was riffing on the urban legend that amphibians and crocodiles live in the city’s sewers. Isn’t that sort of how we got the Ninja Turtles? Their foe, Leatherhead, is a large alligator who was transformed into a humanoid by the same mutagens that transformed the turtles. In the 1987 series, Leatherhead lives in the Everglades; originally he was written as an alligator abandoned to the sewers after a pet store robbery.
Alligators are among the city’s illegal animals. (Ferret, no. Bearded dragons, yes.) It’s legal to ship them when they’re small, so presumably, Godzilla was purchased and shipped to Brooklyn. Through USPS? FedEx? UPS? DHL? How does an exotic animal vendor ship its goods? I’ve met more than one man from Flatbush who thinks an alligator is totally fine for a pet. They must shower less than I do. (Who doesn’t?)
As the lore goes, the sewer alligator is flushed because it’s grown too big and/or too hungry for the small apartment it lives in, and thrives in the humid, subterranean environment, amongst rats, mole people (also a myth), and other flushed oddities. Except the sewers are not warm or moist enough for an alligator–or a crocodile–to survive for very long. It's scary because it's one brave scurry up the right tunnel into my toilet in my apartment.
Wikipedia notes, and I am not Googling this, that the bacteria in human feces would be detrimental to the health of an alligator. So a benefit to dumping Godzilla in a lake and not the sewer, then. Also, wild to assume everything flushed in an apartment’s toilet is under a manhole.
Even with an abnormally warm winter, New York City was not warm enough for Godzilla to thrive. (Los Angeles? Maybe.)
New Yorkers have been finding alligators where they don’t belong for more than a century! An alligator was found in Newtown Creek, an East River tributary, in 1815. In 2010, days before I moved into my first apartment on President Street, a Queens resident spied an eighteen-inch alligator in an “overflowing” sewer drain. An alligator was found in Queens in 2003, and another the same year in Harlem (Al, who lived with a tiger, was purchased legally in New Jersey, and retired to a sanctuary in Ohio). A two-foot caiman named Daimon alluded authorities in Central Park in 2001 for a week before it was hand-caught by a couple from Florida. Two alligators were rescued from a Brooklyn apartment in 2012. Most, if not all, of these alligators, were less than four feet long.
Apartments have been emptied of that tiger, Ming, chimpanzees, and various reptiles. Two years ago an 80-lb 11-month-old cougar was confiscated.
In 1935, the earliest contemporary alligator hullabaloo occurred when “youths shoveling snow” found a sewer gator. They captured the animal and then beat it to death. (I’m sorry. I know.) A version of the 1935 story with a happier ending–moving to the Central Park Zoo or East 88th Street–would make for a compelling children’s tale. It’s possible it is a myth, but in the interest of whimsy, journalists and historians are willing to accept it as true. I couldn’t get past that paywall, either, but a Guardian author reported in 2010 that the alligator fell off a ship from Florida and scurried from the river to the sewer before its untimely demise. It’s not clear how the other alligators arrived, but two were found in Westchester in 1932, one was found in the East River in 1937 (it was kept as a pet), and a two-foot alligator was found on a Brooklyn subway platform. (No thank you, please.) Speculation, much like Godzilla, lands on mail-order pets.
Just for fun: Reggie the alligator was dumped in a Los Angeles lake in 2005. He was finally caught in 2007–during which city officials first found a second, smaller gator! They named it Little Reggie. He lives in the Los Angeles zoo with his companion, Tina. Today Reggie is commemorated with a sculpture in Echo Park Lake.
I like sewer alligators. They’re transplants, like me. None of us are supposed to be here; the land I live on was stolen from the Lenape. When my ancestors came from Ireland and what is now Ukraine, they came through Washington, DC and San Francisco (I think). Mythologically, they are thriving as a result of very specific circumstances. The rest of us, too. There’s always a little glee in the discovery of a wild animal. When the small alligator washed up in 2010, a man cooed, “scaly-pie,” at it while a crowd of onlookers waited for pest control. When I came back to work after hiking around California, my Tuesday trivia cooed in its own way, too.
Deer, Eastern coyotes, raccoons, red-tailed hawks, and piping plovers are native to the city. The Bronx and Staten Island host wild turkeys. Such was Zelda, who lived a happy, solitary life in Battery Park, and survived Hurricane Sandy. Monk parakeets, which were accidentally released through a black market trade, nest in Green-Wood cemetery, Pelham Bay Park, and Brooklyn College’s campus. (It’s the school’s unofficial mascot.) The cemetery initially wanted to get rid of the birds–their stick nests were “unsightly”–but the colony of feral birds kept out pigeons, which I suppose are grosser. (The pigeon is also not native to North America.) I visit the cemetery once a year and people are routinely in awe of the birds. We are delighted by the unexpected!
Exotic animals have long captured our attention! In our zoos, we had Pattycake, Gus, the first zoo animal to be treated with Prozac, and Hattie. Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl, was criminally freed this month and is permitted to live cageless, so long as he continues to appear healthy. (He’s eating a ton of rats in Central Park. Go off, Flaco.) Central Park itself is a haven of activity: a friend compared Godzilla to the Central Park Duck, and I have spent the week lamenting that Wikipedia has not organized the charismatic megafauna that has captured the affection of New Yorkers. (If I could, I’d illustrate each one and sell tote bags.)
The mandarin duck appeared in Central Park in 2018. Its last appearance was in March 2019, and for the few months it hung around Manhattan, it was a sensation. For one, the mandarin duck is particularly handsome. For another, it's an unusual sighting in this area. This duck was banded and presumably settled elsewhere, though the species has been seen in Prospect Park. I thought I saw one last year too, but it's not in my Life List on Merlin, so I either imagined it or failed to log it. (Probably the latter!) Like human residents, the tenure of a celebrity animal is sometimes short-lived.
Last month, dolphins were spotted in The Bronx. Sometimes they turn up in the Gowanus Canal (that’s bad), but usually the arrival of sea mammals in our bodies of water is a positive sign. Finback, the brewery, named itself after a whale that famously appeared in Queens.
Crocodiles, by the way, live in Louisiana and Florida. Crocodiles and alligators are crocodilians; Godzilla is firmly an alligator. The beast in Lake Placid and Gustave are crocodiles. (I know, we didn’t even talk about Gustave, but I believe he’s still alive, in Burundi.) A caiman is an alligatorid that primarily inhabits Mexico and Central America. Their teeth are sharper than their peers. Per reports, I haven't tested them myself.
Unrelated to famous wild animals is the open letter submitted by past and present NYT contributors calling the paper to quit its anti-trans bullshit. I signed the petition of NYT readers and think you should too. My friend Christian talked about it with Brian Lehrer last week.
And a note on the process: While I mopped Sunday, I forced Keith to indulge in more alligator talk. A rather large part of our friendship, at least surface level, because I cherish a friendship that is deeply nuanced, is that the other person is happy to engage in a niche topic the other doesn’t care about! And to that end, he looked up the origins of Killer Croc and Leatherhead, which saved me a little bit of time in my research. He’s not a subscriber but deserves credit nevertheless for his work, his patience, and his enthusiasm.
Sources
ABC News. (2006, January 7). Elusive Central Park Caiman Captured. https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93035
Gould, J., Gould, J., Today, D., Gonella, C., Ramsay, J., Ramsay, J., Brand, D., Max, S., & Ramsay, J. (2023, February 20). There were other alligators in New York before ‘Godzilla.’ Gothamist. https://gothamist.com/news/there-were-other-alligators-in-new-york-before-godzilla
Hacket, Joyce. (2017, November 25). The day I found an alligator in New York. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/24/alligators-new-york-sewer
Helsel, P. (2010, August 23). Gator crawls out of Queens drain. New York Post. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://nypost.com/2010/08/23/gator-crawls-out-of-queens-drain
Illegal Animal · NYC311. (n.d.). https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02255
Miscione, M., Miscione, M., Today, D., Hanssen, T., Yakas, B., Yakas, B., Smith, S., Smith, S., & Shaw, K. (2019, February 8). The Alligator In The Sewer: Evidence Behind NYC’s Urban Legend. Gothamist. https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/the-alligator-in-the-sewer-evidence-behind-nycs-urban-legend
S. B. K. |. (2022, May 26). Diver’s encounter with 7-foot alligator prompts warning, trappers at New Orleans marina. NOLA.com. https://www.nola.com/news/environment/divers-encounter-with-7-foot-alligator-prompts-warning-trappers-at-new-orleans-marina/article_cef70bee-dbb1-11ec-b515-8f7bb1613a19.html
Schiffman, Z. (2023, January 20). There Are Dolphins in the Bronx River. Curbed. https://www.curbed.com/2023/01/dolphins-bronx-river-climate-clean-water.html
Staff, B. E. (2023, February 21). Cold-blooded: Abandoned alligator rescued from Prospect Park lake. Brooklyn Eagle. https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2023/02/21/cold-blooded-abandoned-alligator-rescued-from-prospect-park-lake/
Staff, NYT (1935, February 10). Alligator found in Uptown sewer; youths shoveling snow into manhole see the animal churning in icy water. snare it and drag it out reptile slain by rescuers when it gets vicious -- whence it came is mystery. The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/1935/02/10/archives/alligator-found-in-uptown-sewer-youths-shoveling-snow-into-manhole.html
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, February 6). Sewer alligator. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_alligator
(2021, August 21). An 80-Pound Cougar Is Removed From A New York City Apartment. NPR. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/cougar-new-york-city-apartment-removed-bronx-zoo