It's common for cynical New Yorkers to shrug off the legions of alligators that roam our sewer system as the stuff of Urban Legend, but every now and then one of these creatures rears its fanged head above ground, and then you have to send a letter of apology to that drunk guy at the end of the bar who you thought was just a gullible gator conspiracy theorist. In August of 2010, to cite one example, an 18-inch gator crawled out of a sewer grate in Astoria. And in, uh, 1935, the Times reported that a teenager trapped and killed an 8-foot-long alligator found under 123rd Street. This town's crawling with gators, and you can also find them in Philadelphia, too.
The 18-inch alligator seen here was spotted near a sewer grate in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown. The Associated Press reports that police captured the reptile and delivered it to the city's Animal Care & Control Team, where they've named it Allie-Gator. The creature's gender remains unknown because, as one member of the Animal Care & Control team puts it, "Who's going to do that job?"
[FULL DISCLOSURE: This blog post sponsored by our shameless desire to revisit cherished Radiohead b-side "Fog" on a dreary Friday.]
