Animals in the Toilet
Always Turn the
Bathroom Light On
Seattle's rat hunters
According to a report on the rat population in Seattle, Washington, 2010 may be the "year of the rat" because of the mild weather of the past winter. This video report describes the problem but also offers suggestions to keep the rats out of your toilet.
There have always been stories of creatures found in our sewers, but alligators and snakes in the sewers are just an urban legend... aren't they? This alligator on the left was discovered in a sewer in Mississippi during the effort to assess and clean the main sewer following Hurricane Katrina in the Fall of 2005. A Florida Power & Light crew putting in lines for an addition to the Orlando International Airport found the nest of 87 snakes in a culvert they were using. Visit Sewerhistory.org for more on these and other similar stories.
ACCORDING TO the legend, New Yorkers purchased the alligators while vacationing in Florida, intending them as cute little pets for their apartments back home. When the animals grew too large and too menacing, they were summarily flushed down the toilet and into the sewer system, where they grew even larger by feasting on rats and raw sewage. After years of breeding in this dark, sunless world, blind and albino alligators eventually were produced. From "Sewergators in the News".
Youths Shoveling Snow Into Manhole
See the Animal Churning in Icy Water.
From The New York Times, February 10, 1935:
Reptile Slain by Rescuers ... The youthful residents of East 123d Street, near the murky Harlem River, were having a rather grand time at dusk yesterday shoveling the last of the recent snow into a gaping manhole.
Salvatore Condulucci, 16 years old, of 419 East 123d Street, was assigned to the rim. His comrades would heap blackened slush near him, and he, carefully observing the sewer's capacity, would give the last fine flick to each mound.
Suddenly there were signs of clogging ten feet below, where the manhole drop merged with the dark conduit leading to the river. Salvatore yelled: "Hey, you guys, wait a minute," and got down on his knees to see what was the trouble.
What he saw, in the thickening dusk, almost caused him to topple into the icy cavern. For the jagged surface of the ice blockade below was moving; and something black was breaking through. Salvatore's eyes widened; then he managed to leap to his feet and call his friends.
"Honest, it's an alligator!" he exploded.
Aftenpolten, Norway: A three-year-old boy got the fright of his life on a trip to the toilet on Wednesday.
The youngster was lucky that his mother had come along to open and raise the toilet seat. The startled woman found a carnivorous teju, or tegus, a large black and yellow South American lizard, lurking there newspaper Bergensavisen reports.
Alligator/Alligator II
Reviewed by: Troy Howarth on June 30, 2004
The Film: An alligator, flushed down the toilet when it was a baby, has grown to monstrous size and outgrows its sewer dwelling place. Before long it is on the loose in the big city, and the body count continues to rise....
Frogs Clog Up Toilets!
Frogs have been blamed for blocking up public toilets in New South Wales. They were discovered in the cisterns of toilets at Bodalla Oval sitting on the flaps that let the units refill. The toilets had only been working intermittently and no one knew why. Inspectors from Eurobodalla Shire Council found the source of the problem. The council's works and facilities committee chairman Keith Dance told ABC News Online it will now be taking some "frog-friendly" measures to discourage the creatures from making their homes in the toilets. He says the remedy would probably be as simple as flyscreen or netting placed across the top of the cisterns to stop the frogs getting in. Mr Dance says no frogs will be harmed in the process.
... ... Story filed: 12:37 Friday 5th April 2002 by Ananova
Online edition of The Daily Mirror (UK),
By John Kelly
MEET Keith...a 10ft boa constrictor who has been captured after popping up in the loos at a posh block of flats. The snake had terrified tenants since it was first spotted in a toilet last week, after living in sewage pipes for three months. People had to put bricks on their loo seats to stop the Keith slipping into their bathrooms. Firemen were even called in to try to track him down in the pipework. But it was not until Saturday night that a plucky resident finally trapped him in a bucket.
For the rest of the story.
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Going to the bathroom will never be the same for one local woman, not since she was bitten by a water moccasin who was apparently hiding in her toilet. Alicia Bailey spent three days in the hospital. She's now at home but she's not resting comfortably. She remembers what happened the night she got up to go to the bathroom. "Walked in (to the bathroom) opened up the lid to the toilet and got bit by the water moccasin on the leg." For the rest of the story visit First Coast News, Channel 12
It was very inconvenient when a snake took refuge in their toilet. The two-metre (six feet six inches) long python was first seen early on Tuesday morning as taxi driver Tan Kok-chye relaxed in the living room of his 10th-floor apartment after finishing his shift, Singapore's Straits Times reported. He and his wife called the police, but the snake slithered away. The family thought the snake ... more
Local media in Malaysia reported a grandmother had a frightening experience during a late-night visit to the bathroom when a python placed its jaws tightly around her foot. The incident, in Seberang Tuan Chik village in rural Terengganu state, occurred when the snake entered through a hole in the floor of the house, which is slightly raised above the ground in keeping with Malay tradition. The python tried to drag Ngah Hitam, 72, down the hole, but it appears to have bit more than it could chew - the hole was too small to accommodate the grandmother. The rest of the story ...
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