Video shows city workers stumbling upon five-foot alligator living underground in Florida sewers

A crew in Oviedo got the shock of their lives when they uncovered a 5-foot alligator chilling in an underground stormwater pipe, proving that urban legends about gators in sewers are legit. During a routine inspection on Friday, city workers stumbled upon this surprising find and captured viral video footage of the encounter.

Public works employees were investigating repeated potholes by sending a camera-equipped robot into the city's 75 miles of underground drainage pipes, according to a Jam Press report. "On Friday's inspection, as you'll see in the video, they came across a five-foot alligator!" the City of Oviedo Administration exclaimed on Facebook.

The shocking video shows the robot's camera approach what appears to be a pair of glowing eyes in the dark tunnel. As it gets closer, a full-grown alligator rears up with its mouth open before retreating further back into the pipe system.

"Just another reason not to go wandering down into the stormwater pipes!" city officials warned, expressing relief that human crews didn't directly encounter the reptilian threat. "Thank goodness our crews have a robot," he told the New York Post.

While an alligator lurking in urban sewers may sound like an urban legend from horror movies, Florida's subtropical climate and extensive wetlands make such discoveries somewhat unsurprising to locals.

"Interestingly, alligators...are not an uncommon sight in the Florida storm runoff network," one commenter noted on the city's Facebook post.

Theories about how the 5-foot alligator ended up in Oviedo's underground pipes speculate it likely entered through a stormwater retention pond connected to the drainage system.

Tom Porretto, Oviedo's Public Works Operations Manager, told local media that encountering alligators is "not an everyday thing," they occasionally find them after heavy rains or storms and wash them into pipes from nearby bodies of water.

Those massive American alligators that call Florida home? They just love kicking it in the state's swamps, marshes, and river areas - their natural habitat where they can reach over 14 feet long. It's pretty common for these gators to cruise through waterways and drainage systems, hunting for an easy meal like fish, birds, or any little critters they can get their jaws on.

While seeing a gator in the city might freak some people out, Floridians are used to viral videos of such crazy encounters popping up all the time. In 2020, footage of a gator casually strolling down a neighborhood street in Jacksonville went viral. Just last year, people in Beverly Hills found one taking a dip in their community pool.

The "alligator in the sewer" story has been an urban legend for decades, but it turns out to be real every so often, even beyond the Sunshine State's borders. In 2010, New York's Finest had to wrangle an 18-inch gator crawling out of a storm drain in Queens. And this past February itself, a 4-foot gator, likely an abandoned pet, was pulled from a lake in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Wildlife experts can't stress enough how dangerous it is to approach or feed these reptiles. Florida has strict laws against messing with gators without the proper licenses and permits.

As for the Oviedo gator, city officials haven't announced any plans to remove it from the pipes yet, probably trying to avoid a risky capture mission unless it becomes a real threat. But for the time being, residents have an unusual new "subterranean neighbor" to be aware of.