Related articles:
Boston Daily Globe, September 5, 1915
Syracuse Herald, February 18, 1917


The Evening Observer [Dunkirk, New York]
March 2, 1915
Page 8

THIS IS INTERESTING
Rather Remarkable Suggestion for Cleaning Sewers at Erie.

The Eric Dispatch is responsible for this:

Alligators may be used to clean out city sewers as the result of an offer received by Thedore [sic] Eichhorn, superintendent of streets, yesterday. A New York company wrote to him asking that the innovation be tried out here as it is to be in Dayton, [Ohio]. The company has agents in Florida who select sewer-sized alligators and ship them to cities which order.

The idea is to start an alligator through the sewer head first. Being in a position a little too complicated to turn around the animal will crawl until he reaches a manhole. A rope is to be tied around the alligator's body, and as he moves he will drag a scraper.

Superintendent Eichhorn wasn't certain yesterday which of the street department force he would employ to handling the alligator if he gets one. But he did agree that the idea is a practical one, because an alligator has the strength and determination to push his way through any clog that ever blocked a sewer.

"I'm going to take the matter up and, if they don't charge too much for him, we may get an alligator," he said. When the animal becomes too old to work his way through life and sewers alike, it was suggested that he be placed as the first installment in a municipal zoological garden.

(Thanks to Sewerfriend Bonnie Taylor-Blake for this item.)

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