

No parts on this alligator were harmed.

In what may be one of the most disturbing—and confusing—stories to come out of Brooklyn in a while, the Daily News reports today that there has been a “bizarre find of severed alligator limbs on [a] Williamsburg street.” That’s right—severed alligator limbs. The limbs were found scattered on N. 10th Street, “covered in flies, which” the News reports, “have swarmed the red bloody joints where the limbs were pulled from the reptile’s body. The 4-inch long limbs have a faint fishy smell.” Uh, gross. But what does it all mean? Who can we turn to for answers about this gruesome business? If only there were some kind of alligator expert. Preferably with the word “jungle” in his name. But does such a man exist?

He does! And the News found him. Unfortunately, even expert “Jungle Bob” Smith of Jungle Bob’s Reptile World in Centereach, L.I. is baffled, saying, “This is certainly a mutilation situation, and it’s a sick individual who would do that. Down South, people eat gator, they eat the tail part and cut it up to get the meat there. They kill it and chop it up like you would a chicken and often the head is used for weird souvenirs. The skin is used in the (fashion) world for shoes, suitcases and clothes. They’re not something that’s common in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, that’s the part that befuddles me.”

Three legs were found in all, “one, found between two slabs of rocks outside a construction site, is placed as if the animal were sticking its arm outside of a lair. A second was placed on a car seat across the street while a third was on a street grate.” Williamsburg residents seem to be taking it in stride, one saying that he’s “seen way worse” and that “twenty years ago there used to be dead bodies all along the water. This is nothing.” So, in other words, perspective is everything, and at least there aren’t dead human bodies floating in the East River anymore. I guess that’s what you call progress, Brooklyn.

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