CLEVELAND, Ohio-- George Uhl and another sewer district worker were surprised Thursday to find a 2-foot alligator near a sewer outfall in Big Creek in Cleveland.

Uhl, a maintenance supervisor with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, said the alligator was so cold that it wasn't moving. It was found in shallow water near the district's Jennings Road Pump Station.

Uhl and the other worker, Marty Gandolf, were inspecting the outfall, which sits behind the pump station in the vicinity of Jennings Road and Harvard Avenue.

"He'd have been dead by morning," Uhl said today as he held the alligator for the media at a Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's lab in Cuyahoga Heights.

The men placed the alligator in a garbage can filled with warm water to try to revive it.

Despite the popular urban legend about alligators living in sewers, sewer district officials said this was the first one anyone could recall finding. They believe that someone dumped it in response to a state law that required, as of Monday, owners to registered wild animals such as alligators and adhere to strict regulations for keeping and caring for them. Only two owners of alligators in Cuyahoga County signed up under the new policy.

"We have a feeling that someone who didn't want to pay the fee dumped him down the sewer," said Jean Chapman, a sewer district spokeswoman.

Later in the day, the alligator was determined to be a female. Workers named her "Jenni" after the Jennings Road Pump Station where she was found.

Sewer officials said she is recovering nicely and will be kept until a permanent home can be found. They've contacted the Ohio Department of Agricultural for help.