Chapter 125: Gatorbait
Sometimes you just don't want to know what is lurking in some of Zootopia's darkest places! Today is Alligators in the Sewers Day (Yep, it really is!) Sorry about this chapter, I just couldn't pass this one up!
There was a flashing yellow light while one of the city's Public Works Department trucks blocked the street. It was surrounded by bright orange and white striped plastic cones that had been set up to direct traffic from where the crew of workers had opened an entry into the underground sewer. The large iron circular cover had been dragged aside and a young rat in a bright yellow and orange safety vest peered down into the dark gaping hole.
"I ain't going down there alone!" the young adult rat protested while he stood up and pushed the yellow-colored hard hat back over his ears.
"It's your turn!" a taller beaver replied as he too stood up from where he was also looking down into the dark hole. "So go get the ladder and climb down there, we don't have all day."
"Nope, I'm not going down there alone," the smaller rodent snapped while he shook his head. "This is Happy Town, who knows what or even who you might find in the sewers around here?"
"Like what?" another beaver in a matching hard hat asked as he joined the other two workers standing next to the hole in the street.
"Alligators!" the rat firmly answered.
"There are no alligators in the sewer, everyone knows that is an urban myth!" the taller beaver laughed.
"But old Pete told me that there are gators down there!" the smaller worker said. "Big green slimy ones with huge teeth."
"He was teasing you!"
"But he told me that is how he got his peg leg, a huge gator bit his leg clean off at the knee."
"He lost it in a car accident."
"Oh?"
"When I started working in the department a few years ago, he told me that he was trapped in an avalanche while skiing up in the Green Mountains just north of Tundratown and he had to chew his leg off so he could crawl to freedom. He is always making up stories for you newbies," the larger beaver scoffed.
"Frankie at the office says that there is a pack of cannibalistic hyena underground dwellers living in the sewers under Sahara Square," the rat quickly added.
"C.H.U.D.s ? They don't exist either, that was from a bad movie they made back in the 1980s. Now you two go get the ladder and climb down there!" a tall lanky bobcat growled as he stood there holding a cup of coffee in one paw and a clipboard in the other.
"Give him the clipboard and he thinks he is now the boss," the larger beaver grumbled, and then slapping the rat on the back he added. "Come on let's get the ladder and then suit up, I'll go down there with you."
While the two workers fumbled with the aluminum ladder, the beaver said, "Now the worst sewers are those in the Nocturnal District."
"Why's that, do they have gators too?" the rat laughed.
"No, something even worse than that, there are swarms of flesh-eating scarabs.
"Wait!" the rat said as he put his end of the ladder down. "That sounds like something from that movie about a mummy."
"You've been warned," the rat ominously replied while trying not to burst out laughing at the look his gullible companion was now giving him.
From a booth inside of a nearby café, Jake watched while the four city workers talked in the middle of the street. "Well, that is a fine example of our hard-earned tax dollars at work!" the raccoon sarcastically said to the fox sitting across from him. "Nick, they are just standing around yapping instead of doing their jobs."
Nick set his cup of coffee down while he too watched the workers for a few moments. "I sure wouldn't want to have their job, having to go down there."
"Why's that?" Jake asked.
The fox looked back at the raccoon and dramatically answered his question with one word, "Alligators!"
"There are no alligators in the sewers."
"Sure there are."
"No, there are not. Besides, how would you know?"
"Back when I was a rookie, they found a dead body in one of the sewers downtown and Bogo sent me and Judy to go secure the crime scene until the CSI team arrived."
"Why did he send you two?"
"We were the smallest officers at that time and so he figured the others were too big to get down there comfortably. Could you imagine Francine trying to squeeze her rump into a hole that size?"
"Talk about no trunk space!" Jake laughed.
"Yeah, not funny!" Nick tried not to snicker at the joke. "Anyway, the others were too big and the wolves had too sensitive noses to deal with the stench."
"Your nose is almost as good as a wolf's."
"So, we got the short end of the straw as they say."
"Still what has that to do with alligators, was the victim mauled by a gator?"
"While we were waiting, there was a guy from the city's Public Works Department down there with us and he told us about how the sewers used to be full of pale blind alligators who were the descendants of a pair that were flushed down the toilets years earlier. They would lay in ambush for someone to come by and snatch them, dragging them into the putrid water to never be seen again."
"I don't believe you, fox!"
"No seriously, he said that they were once all over the place, but years ago one of their supervisors found out where the reptiles were breeding and had them exterminated…all but one which escaped. He is still lurking down there today, eating only the gods know what?"
"He was teasing you…wasn't he?"
"He was pretty convincing, he even told us that he lost his leg to the gator and that was why he had a peg leg."
Today is the anniversary of the February 9th, 1935 sighting of a gator in the sewers of Harlem. The NY Times even reported on the sighting!
A 1960 obituary in The Times, credits a former NYC Sewer supervisor named Teddy May of having "led a squad in clearing the sewers of a number of live alligators that, discarded in the sewers as tiny pets, had survived and grown large."
