- The rumors of alligators roaming the sewers are true
- So true, that a film, the 1980 horror film Alligator, explored this concept
- Workers in Oviedo, Florida, captured footage of a huge alligator in a sewer
A terrifying sight similar to the 1980 horror film Alligator greeted Florida sewer workers. An alligator was found roaming in a sewer pipe. What a wild site!
Workers in Oviedo, Florida, proved everyone’s worst nightmare when they found the five-foot gator chilling in a sludge-filled pipe on 5 May.
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Movies have popularized the myths of the reptile living below us in the sewers for decades. Alligator (1980), directed by Lewis Teague, was one of the first to do this, in a film where a herpetologist (Robin Riker) helps a woman track her flushed away pet, only to discover he has become a mutated gator named Ramone.
See the story of the sewer gator here.
The sewer alligator: What happened?
Posted to the Facebook page for the city of Oviedo was a video of the pipe where the scary gator resides.
Here’s a snap of the gator.
The incident started when a Stormwater crew was sent to the road of Lockwood Boulevard in the city to investigate some potholes appearing in the road. Armed with a four-wheel robotic camera to investigate the pipes in the area, they got more than they bargained for.
You see, the camera is used to investigate any issues with pipes, like leaks or cracks. However, this crew put their camera up the sewer pipe and soon captured a video of the huge reptile there.
Alarmed by the camera, the creature starts backing away as it gets closer, and gets aggressive. The crew only realized it was a gator when the creature decided to turn around and head back down the pipe with its huge tail behind it.
What was said about the gator incident?
“Just another reason not to go wandering down into the stormwater pipes,” the City of Oviedo Facebook page joked in the caption of the video.
This is not the first instance where an alligator has been in the sewers in New York – a similar incident happened back in 2010, but it is rare. In February 2025, at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake, investigators recovered another huge gator, a four-foot one!
Unsurprisingly, Florida, particularly the Everglades, is filled with gators, so finding a gator isn’t the most shocking thing. In New York, it is.
Authorities suspected the gator had entered the pipe through one of the city’s storm ponds.
