Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 9, 1990 TAG: 9004070257
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES BARRON THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," the nation's No. 1 box office hit, features four hard-shelled pizza chompers from under the streets of New York City.
Larry Mirra's workshop aquarium in the Bronx features four hard-shelled pizza chompers from under the streets of New York City.
The big-screen quartet was dreamed up by two cartoonists who are now raking in greenbacks - dollar bills, not hard-shelled creatures of an unusual hue.
Mirra's foursome was raked in by equipment that combs the sludgy, slimy water at the sewage-treatment plant where he works.
Telling the world about the turtles was the brainstorm of the Department of Environmental Protection, which was so sure they were a hot property it issued two press releases.
Mirra's reptilian rogues are not named after Renaissance men, the way the ones in the movie are.
His have not learned martial arts from their spiritual leader - and their spiritual leader is not, as far as anyone knows, a gigantic rat.
And whether they say things like "Let's haul shell out of here," as the ones in the movie do, is unclear.
When the question was put to them last week, they had no comment.
Once they were sludgy and oily.
But now the four cheeseburger-sized turtles - orange-shelled Stevie; the prize-biter Ali; Little Bit, whom Mirra has clocked at speeds approaching some tortoises, and Dennis - get shrimp and leftovers from Mirra's house.
And they swim in crystal-clear aquarium water, which Mirra says is a good deal nicer than the grimy torrent that carried them in.
"They must have been petrified, the way the sewer runs," Mirra said. "It's dark down there, and they got knocked around."
In every New Yorker's catalog of urban legends so awful they must be true, alligators in the sewers rank near the top.
The good news is no one has ever seen an alligator down there.
But besides Mirra's, there are 50-pound snapping turtles to rival anything on the silver screen.
And snakes. And rats. And carp this big. Honest.
"The turtles crawl through the debris," Mirra said. "The fish just float. The two 50-pounders, we put them in a barrel. They could have probably taken your head off."
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was called in to set them free, far from the onrushing subterranean labyrinth they called home.
The environmental agency has two theories about how turtles get into the sewer system.
One, they were back-washed into outlet pipes from the Bronx River, said Tina Casey, a department spokeswoman.
Two, the turtles were hatched in ponds at the Bronx Zoo or the Central Park Zoo. This does not really explain how they made their way down under.
Along with eels, pythons and an occasional raccoon. But absolutely no alligators.
"The legend is the alligators are albino because there's no sun," Casey said.
"Mostly what survives down there is cockroaches and rats," she said. "Doesn't sound too glamorous. We've found, in terms of animals commuting through the sewers, a lot of snakes. But really, there's not much down there."
The turtles make popular pets among sewage-treatment plant veterans. Christopher Dritto, a colleague of Mira's, took home a small one that washed up last year.
"Orange, red-bluish," he said, describing the colors on the shell. "Real abstract."
Casey said she had been promised "the next turtle that comes through."
"But I can't take it," she said. "My cat is a maniac. He goes after anything that moves, including my toes. He'll kill me for this, but he's fat, and I don't think he'd appreciate having a turtle as a companion."
by CNB