BS: This is starting to get scary

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: SharonA
Date: 19 Oct 01 - 06:06 PM

Matt Flush: So, ya wanna swap flies? I'm guessing I'd have to send you quite a few Pennsylvania ones in order to get back a Texas fly! Could you send me a saddle along with it?

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: GUEST,wlisk
Date: 19 Oct 01 - 02:39 PM

I got the email too. Only it was about crocodiles. I tought it must be a croc of sh*t. Bill

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: DougR
Date: 19 Oct 01 - 02:12 PM

What's a garburator?

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: GUEST,Matt Flush
Date: 19 Oct 01 - 02:16 AM

Don`t Panic!

I have been a shithead all my life and I read a book about sewers written by a guy with a name similar to mine, so I am an expert even if I don`t know the latin names.

The best strategy against alligators in the toilets is to just keep on shitting. Alligators don`t like to eat shit.

Only flies do that. So take a newspaper to the toilet so you can swap flies. Also helps if you are running out of toiletpaper...

Matt Flush, Safe Homes In Texas Inc.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Oct 01 - 01:11 AM

Talk about Hallowe'en tales! Turn the lights down low and tell your stories... I'll bet none of us will go to the bathroom this night before going to bed.

I just remembered the reason that years ago I started putting the lid down on a toilet before leaving a bathroom. I have always rationalized it by saying that it makes no sense to buy color-coordinated fuzzy covers for them if the lids are left up so that no one can see them.

The real reason is that I heard late night stories about rats coming up through drain lines, and I wasn't about to chance seeing a rat climb out of the bowl.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 09:05 PM

I remember a rat catcher I interviewed for a local paper I was working on. He told me about how sometimes you'd get rats int the sewers and they'd crawl up into the houses round the U bend. But me made me promise not to put it in the story because it would upset people.

So be thankful if you've got alligators down there to keep the rats in check.

Incidentally the alligator legend has a precedant - here is an extract from Henry Mayhew'sLondon Labour and the London Poor:

There is a strange tale in existence among the shore-workers, of a race of wild hogs inhabiting the sewers in the neighbourhood of Hampstead.

The story runs, that a sow in young, by some accident got down the sewer through an opening, and wandering away from the spot, littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal and garbage washed into it continually. Here, it is alleged, the breed multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost as ferocious as they are numerous.

This story, apocryphal as it seems, has nevertheless its believers, and it is ingeniously argued, that the reason why none of the subterranean animals have been able to make their way to the light of day is, that they could only do so by reaching the mouth of the sewer at the river-side, while, in order to arrive at that point, they must necessarily encounter the Fleet ditch, which runs toward the river with great rapidity, and as it is the obstinate nature of the pig to swim against the stream, the wild hogs of the sewers invariably work their way back to their original quarters, and are thus never to be seen.

What seems strange in the matter is, that the inhabitants of Hampstead never have been known to see any of these animals pass beneath the gratings, nor to have been disturbed by their gruntings. The reader of course can believe as much of the story as he pleases, and it is right to inform him that the sewer-hunters themselves have never yet encountered any of the fabulous monsters of the Hampstead sewers.

I was going to type this in - but I checked, via Google, and found someone had already done it for me - together with this note, and the quotes below:

The quote above is from Volume II of the 1861 edition of Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company). The writings that make up London Labour were originally published between 1849 and 1851 in the Morning Chronicle newspaper. The sewerswine were also briefly mentioned in a Daily Telegraph editorial of October 10, 1859.

Mayhew also wrote of rumors of killer rats in the sewers:

Other stories are told of sewer-hunters beset by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things overpowered them, and in a few days afterwards their skeletons were discovered picked to the very bones.

And later:

Moreover, far from there being any romance in the tales told of the rats, these vermin are really numerous and formidable in the sewers, and have been known, I am assured, to attack men when alone, and even sometimes when accompanied by others, with such fury that the people have escaped from them with difficulty. They are particularly ferocious and dangerous, if they be driven into some corner whence they cannot escape, when they will immediately fly at any one that opposes their progress. I received a similar account to this from one of the London flushermen.

And, quoting one of his informants:

"I've often seed as many as a hundred rats at once, and they're woppers in the sewers, I can tell you; them there water rats, too, is far more ferociouser than any other rats, and they'd think nothink of tackling a man, if they found they couldn't get away no how, but if they can why they runs by and gits out o' the road.

"I knows a chap as the rats tackled in the sewers; they bit him hawfully: you must ha' heard on it; it was him as the watermen went in arter when they heard him a-shouting as they was a rowin' by. Only for the watermen the rats would ha' done for him, safe enough. Do you recollect hearing on the man as was found in the sewers about twelve year ago?--oh you must--the rats eat every bit of him, and left nothink but his bones. I knowed him well, he was a riglar shore-worker.

"The rats is wery dangerous, that's sartain, but we always goes three or four on us together, and the varmint's too wide awake to tackle us then, for they know they'd git off second best."

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: AliUK
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 08:45 PM

In my email it wasnt 'gators but possums. They were gonna jump up ot of the u-bend and bite you on the ass...hey wait a minute, I've just seen the email addy! SPAAAAWWWW!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 08:37 PM

Just heard on TV so it must be true that the animals have been gettin' hurt in the toilets and then they apply for government help. The Gator Aid program is the real reason for the downturn in the economy.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 08:13 PM

This certainly is scary, and I got an e mail last week telling me that the world is going to end soon.I can't remember who it was from but it was a foreign looking name, I have just bought a weeks shopping, so I hope he is wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: SINSULL
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 08:09 PM

Had a similar experience when my kitty cuddled up under the blankets on a cold night and discovered a mouse. Still brings tears to my eyes 25 years later.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 08:09 PM

Used to have a wirehair terrier who sat in the toilet bowl when the weather was hot. Lyrical lady, with alligators in the garburator, you can make Gatorade!

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 06:56 PM

Never trust a terrier.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 06:35 PM

hhhahhaha

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 06:28 PM

You may laugh - when Guto the Terrier was a young puppy I was visiting my parents here in South Wales.

A beer or two then out the back to the "outhouse/dunikin/smallest room" out side.

One small terrier follows, sees me waving something small, soft and pink over the pan - jumps up to grab and bit.

Oooooooooh ! It brought tears to my eyes.

Gareth - still wincing 14 years later.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: SharonA
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 06:25 PM

Well, radriano, I wouldn't worry too much about BS archiving until we see The BS Tradition at the top of the Forum page, ABOVE the DT!! ;^)

Obviously, the reptile-planting in the sewers is the work of bin Potten and his al-Gator (pronounced, of course, al-gaitah) network.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 06:00 PM

Alligators live in the garbarator don'cha know. At least that's what my girls were told when they were little!

LL

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: SINSULL
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 05:51 PM

This is not funny. I have told the tale of my potty training many times before. My brothers convinced me that alligators grab little girl butts and drag them down to the sewers. Little boys stand far enough away to see them coming - alligators not little girl butts. The episode of the X-Files with the flukeman in the portajohn caused me weeks of worry. Now this! Ax handle safely in place in both bathrooms. We shall overcome.....or overflow.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 05:42 PM

No need to worry folks - here is a link to a page that tells you how to make yourself an earth closet.

That'll fool those Terrorist Alligators. As the song goes "On account of those alligators, I'll crap out in the woods." (That might help get radriano setttled - this is now a BS thread with a musical drift in it.)

Only problem is, there might be something in those stories about Poison Moles...

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 05:21 PM

Damn straight, Amergin! I could see this coming, because alligators have been seriously upset about the handbag and alligator shoe issue for years, not to mention the draining of swamplands. It was only a matter of time before it happened.

BTW, I think I might have met the shoeshine guy, and if it's the guy I'm thinking of he's an unimpeachable witness. Hell, he's more unimpeachable than Dick Nixon or even Bill Clinton, and you can't beat that! Don't sit down when using the toilet!

The safest thing to do is rig up a sort of hammock or cradle that hangs from the ceiling and bomb the buggers from way up high without taking any losses, the way the USA does when it has wars with small countries. If you miss the target, of course, the results can be messy and embarrassing, but no system is flawless.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Hilary
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:46 PM

Love it Amergin - keep it up. Although to be sensible, just for a moment, maybe the BS need not be archived, or only for a limited time. H

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: iRiShBaBe
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:46 PM

calm down radrino.. its only a bit of fun...

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:45 PM

radriano, I'm asking this question sincerely. Do you actually think that music threads will be bumped from the archives so that silly threads can get in?

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: radriano
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:40 PM

You know, these threads may be amusing to some but think of it this way:

As all these inane threads are archived they will take up valuable room that could house music threads which should be the thrust of this site.

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:33 PM

Oh, NO! Are we not to be safe anywhere? But wait- in Alaska, we don't have reptiles... OK, everybody, come visit me. But due to the anticipated heavy demand, please make it no more frequently than every other week.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: MMario
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:24 PM

The puzzling thing is how they managed to get them into our septic system without digging up the lawn or entering the house. unless- *gasp* could it be? they must have planted them there 10 years ago when we had the system refurbished! This has all the earmarks of a long-term conspiracy!

Subject: RE: BS: This is starting to get scary
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:19 PM

Already caught one of the buggers in my toilet. Must have been one of the advance troops. I'd say better cork it for the next couple of weeks at least.

Subject: This is starting to get scary
From: Amergin
Date: 18 Oct 01 - 04:12 PM

I don't know if this is true or not...I couldn't find anything on snopes about it....but I got this in my email and to tell you the truth I am getting seriously scared....:

Don't go to the bathroom on October 28th. CIA intelligence reports that a major plot is planned for that day. Anyone who takes a poopon the 28th will be bitten on the ass by an alligator. Reports indicate that organized groups of alligators are planning to riseup into unsuspecting American's toilet bowls and bite them when they are doing their dirty business.

I usually don't send emails like this, but I got this informationfrom a reliable source. It came from a friend of a friend whose cousin is dating this girl whose brother knows this guy whose wife has a hairdresser whose husband buys hotdogs from this guy who knows a shoeshine guy who shines the shoes of a mailroom worker who has a friend who's drug dealer sells drugs to another mailroom worker who works in the CIA building. He apparently overheard two guys talking in the bathroom about alligators and came to the conclusion that we are going to be attacked. So it must be true.