Gator, Can You Spare a Dime?

It's hard to believe, but there was a time when doctors encouraged you to smoke because they thought (or at least they were paid to think) that it was good for you.  I suppose this blast-from-the-past would be sort of a zoo equivalent.

According to a newspaper article from 1950, a sign in the old reptile house at The Baltimore Zoo encouraged visitors to throw coins at Big Al and Big Jim the alligators, with a special goal to land one on the reptiles' backs.  "In the olden days, when a brave desired to gain a sign of the fortunes that awaited him," it read, he would "seek out the great alligator and cast upon his broad back offerings of fine wampum.  Should the wampum strike and there remain, the gods would surely grant this warrior many favors."

The article then mentions that no one knows where this legend came from.  I suspect the answer is, "from the ether of a zoo director's imagination."  Wampum was traded pretty widely across indigenous North America, and, yes, did appear in the southeast, where alligators are found.  That being said, it was mostly a product of the northeast, especially the New England/New York region, as that's where the shells used to make it come from.  So I'm pretty sure Zoo Director Arthur Watson was just trying to scrounge up a few coins for the zoo.

Thankfully this practice has petered out.  Besides the negative health impact on the animals (to say nothing of repeatedly being pelted with bits of hard metal), you know what terrifies me the most about this?  The thought of some idiot seeing a big pile of coins lying in an alligator pool, and climbing in to help themselves... and maybe not making it back out in one piece.