Has this gator tale gone down the drain?
One of the longest-lived urban legends I'm familiar with holds that
congregations of hungry, vicious alligators are prowling the New York City sewer system. There's at least one documented case of an actual gator in the city's sewer system, and today marks the 75th anniversary of the discovery by a group of young boys of a 7.5- to 8-foot-long alligator in a sewer on 123rd Street in Manhattan.
Borough President Scott Stringer has even declared February 9 "Alligators in the Sewers Day." For more details on that 1935 event, read the captivating "Alligator Found in Uptown Sewer," from the February 10, 1935, edition of
The New York Times (
download PDF).
The Times'
City Room blog offers some more alligator lore.
It seems that ravenous reptiles enter the city's sewer network when people flush their no-longer-wanted baby gators down the toilet. (They apparently buy the alligators while on vacation or from some illicit vendor.) That's certainly a cruel, unacceptable outcome for the alligators and an iffy move for a toilet, especially if it's not up to handling such a large task.
In our
latest report on toilets, we found some gravity-flush models that can work as well as the most-powerful pressure-assisted toilets. The report also notes that while the most-efficient models can cut down on how much water you use at home, some lower-flow toilets required two flushes in our flush tests.
If you're in the market for a new commode, use our
ratings of toilets (available to
subscribers). Also watch our International Builders' Show product preview video of the
Kohler Archer one-piece toilet.
As if New Yorkers need another potential danger to keep them on edge, a
trio of coyotes was seen moving across the Columbia University campus this past Sunday. As the
New York Post's
gossip-dishing Cindy Adams would say, Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.
—Steven H. Saltzman
