This story in today’s Boston Globe was just too weirdly bizarre to pass up. In 1901 a woman in Chelsea gave three baby alligators to the City of Boston because she became scared of them as they grew. William Doogue, the city’s superintendent of Common and Public Grounds saw an opportunity and moved the alligators to the pond in Boston’s Public Garden.
It quickly became a sensation. Crowds would come to see the alligators and to feed them live rats.
Now if someone can get Newton Parks & Rec to sign off on it, I’d be more than happy to raise the money to buy alligators for the fountain outside City Hall or maybe the pond so we could bring this heartwarming scene to the heart of our city.
““The victim is thrown into the pond,” it read. “As it splashes the water the three alligators start towards it. Kicking and squealing it is dragged beneath the water … they fight violently, the mud is stirred from the bottom of the shallow pond. Then through the muddy water appear splotches of red. The crowd slowly disperses. The fun is over — for now.”
Yeah, we know what happens next: The city decides to abandon the Baby Alligators Fostering Project and, in the dead of night, city employees secretly flush the little gators down the toilet. And then they breed in the sewers, and one day radioactive chemicals are accidentally flushed into the system, and before you know it there are 20-foot long super-powered albino alligators terrorizing the city. Their invasion of a City Council meeting is captured on the local-access cable broadcast, and becomes the 26th most-viewed program in its history.
@Essteess – Yes it’s nearly inevitable
@Essteess. It’s either Celtic music or the macabre that seems to draw us together.