NYC Wildlife Officials Pull 4-Foot Alligator Out Of Lake In Brooklyn Park (Pictures)

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Contrary to popular belief, the sewers of New York City are not, in fact, home to a quartet of mutant teenage turtles named after famed Renaissance masters who possess a love for martial arts that is rivaled only by their affinity for pizza.

With that said, those tunnels have housed some other reptiles over the years in the form of the alligators that have become the stuff of (urban) legend. 

We somehow used to live in a world where it was shockingly easy to get a tiny pet gator dropped off at your doorstep. While NYC’s sewers were never home to an army of animals that were flushed down the toilet after growing beyond the “cute” phase of their existence, there were still a number of instances of large alligators being captured underneath the city and in its rivers.

People in warmer climates may be used to encountering gators in fairly unexpected places, but New Yorkers typically don’t need to keep their heads on a swivel as far as that particular threat is concerned. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no chance they’ll ever encounter one in the wild.

According to ABC7, a maintenance worker in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park got one hell of a surprise over the weekend when they spotted what turned out to be a four-foot-long alligator that was pulled out of a lake in the oasis on Sunday.

An official for the Parks Department says the “lethargic” creature was taken to a rehabilitation center to be treated for the adverse effects of the cold weather before it was transported to the Bronx Zoo to continue its recovery.

They were also forced to remind residents that “throwing an alligator in a lake in a public park” is not the proper procedure to follow when you decide you no longer want to take care of one, because that is somehow something that needs to be stressed.