AIDS-Origin Traditions Urban Legends
Various quasi-scientific theories about the origins of AIDS circulate either as unverified reports (rumors) or in narrative form (legends), as well as in published works and on websites. These theories are supported by the general belief in conspiracies supposedly perpetrated by governments, scientists, or medical researchers. Diane Goldstein in her detailed study of AIDS folklore distinguishes three forms of AIDS-Origin traditions. “Animal Theories” claim that AIDS “developed from a natural disease previously existing only in some other species of animal” (often monkeys). “Isolated-Case Theories” claim that AIDS “developed from a much older human disease not previously noted by science” (often among an isolated ethnic group). “Laboratory-Virus Theories” claim that AIDS “is a man-made virus manufactured either accidentally or deliberately” (often, supposedly, by the CIA or another secret government agency). The focus of these theories is commonly Africa or Haiti with
the claimed purpose of such government conspiracies typically being to exterminate certain racial minorities or homosexuals.
The Air-Freighted Pet Urban Legends
But the passenger made one final protest to the impatient airline staff, “No! My dog was dead. I was returning him to Israel for burial!” Lovely story, full of details, but also full of holes. Wouldn’t the flight attendant notice that the dog was dead at the start? How likely is it that a foreign airport staff could find a look-alike dog within half an hour just from a verbal description? Why would the woman even consider having her dead dog on the seat next to her in a pet carrier? How did she get her dead pet through customs and on the plane in the first place? And is it even possible to enter the cargo hold of a jetliner while in flight? But such questions are simply academic; after all, it’s an urban legend.
Paul Harvey repeated a version from a Dallas listener on the air in 1987, and a report of speeches by Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North of the Iran-Contra scandal revealed that he told the story during a lecture tour in 1988. Earlier legends sharing at least one motif with this legend were “The Dead Cat in the Package” and one about a stolen dog corpse; “The Air-Freighted Pet” is itself the likely ancestor of “The Hare Dryer” (or “Resurrected Rabbit”) legend that emerged strongly in
1988.
Alligators in the Sewers Urban Legends
Baby pet alligators are brought back from Florida (or sometimes purchased at Coney Island or at carnivals) by New York City children. When the gators grow too large for comfort, many are disposed of in the toilets by parents. Hundreds of tiny flushed amphibians have grown, mated, and reproduced in the sewer system, and eventually many of them turn white from the lack of sunshine. The existence of sewergators is officially denied by New York City authorities, but information about
them occasionally leaks out.
Dismissed as “one of the sillier folktales of the late 1960s” in a book by herpetologists, this sewer legend continues to be mentioned in, among many other places, a serious novel of 1963 (Thomas Pynchon’s V), a children’s book of 1974 (Peter Lippman’s The Great Escape), a horror film of 1980 (Alligator), and a modern-art installation of 1993 (done by Anne Veraldi in a New York subway station as part of the city’s Creative Stations program). Queries about sewergator rumors regularly arrive at the offices of the New York City Bureau of Sewers and are routinely denied. Yet the Bureau sells T-shirts and sweatshirts alluding to the legend. Numerous cartoons, columns, and other popular-culture sources have referred to “Alligators in the Sewers” as one of the best known of all American urban legends, although, curiously, it is generally associated only with one city. Robert Daley’s 1959 book The World beneath the City included an interview with a man claiming to have been sewer commissioner in the 1930s when a campaign was mounted to clean all the gators out of the sewer system, but spokespersons after the death of this informant revealed that he had never been commissioner and, in fact, had delighted in spinning outrageous yarns.
In 1935, a New York Times article described a full-grown alligator that had actually been dragged out of a city sewer. Names and specific places were identified, but there was no mention of flushed baby pets as a possible source. Although the origin of the American legend is still uncertain, it seems likely that there was some influence from a similar English legend of the nineteenth century as discussed in Thomas Boyle’s 1989 book Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead. Two accounts of octopuses in the sewers of ancient Roman towns are interesting analogues of the modern urban legend, but probably have no direct connection to the modern stories.