What is the strangest urban legend you've ever heard?

Too many, too many!

(And where have you been? And where are all those really good questions you used to ask?)

Well, as a University of Florida fan (Go Gators! National championships in two major sports at the same time! Can't beat that! And Democrats in control of both houses of Congress! Hot Da-yum!) -- well, as a UF fan, I still like the urban legends about alligators in the sewers of New York City.

Here are the headlines from 1935 (I'm told):

ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER

Youths Shoveling Snow into Manhole

See the Animal Churning in Icy Water

SNARE IT AND DRAG IT OUT

Reptile Slain by Rescuers

When It Gets Vicious--

Whence It Came is Mystery

That's the story Thomas Pynchon picked up for V (or so I'm told). Benny has a job hunting alligators in the sewers under Manhattan.

Recent versions have them growing to tremendous size after having been flushed down the toilet by naive pet owners (or so I heard from a friend who knows someone who lives in NYC).

OK, ok, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" is still better, I suppose, and more widespread. But, after all, I am a Gator fan . . . .

And then there's the one about the prisoner named Sam, sentenced to death, leaning against the walls in his basement cell, and bringing the house down around him--and all the big guys upstairs in the same wreckage.

Oh, his woman's name was D'lilah, a Palestinian (or so I've been told). Hmmm.

John Milton got some use out of that story. Agonistes, he called him. Same old Sam. Now, "eyeless in Gaza."

Where is this Sam when we need him?

In Guantánamo? In Abu Graib?

Not huntin' alligators in the sewers of DC, I suppose.

And where's D'lilah?

D'leeza?

Nah, no way.

You can't believe anything they say in DC.

(Go Gators!)

The one where a woman has a rabbit... and there is a guy who lives next door who has a dog that is always trying to get the rabbit. Well one day he comes home and finds his dog with the rabbit...and it's all covered with dirt...so the man takes the dead rabbit and washes it and blow dries it and put it back in its cage. Well later that day the woman comes home and sees the man and says...the strangest thing happened...my rabbit died and I buried him and someone cleaned him up and put him back in his cage. I saw this on a show called Urban Legends or something like that. I thought it was funny!

That a great White shark attacked a helicopter:http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blsharkattac...

Great whites get enough bad press from the media.They are endangered or in the least threatened with extinction. Whoever reported and posted this story did a great disservice to the species and must thing that we are idiots to believe such a thing could happen. More people are killed by vending machines in the US by vending machines than great whites: 37 known vending machine fatalities occurred between 1978 and 1995, for an average of 2.18 deaths per year. Over the past decade there were a total of six recorded shark attack fatalities in the U.S., for an average of .6 deaths per year. http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/a/005445.htm

While the turkey you cook for Thanksgiving has never been airborne, wild turkeys can fly. Apparently not fast enough, however.

Wild turkeys feed on the ground, which may have something to do with the myth that they can't fly. The have to fly, however, because they roost in trees at night. Some accounts say they can soar up to 55 mph for short bursts.

Oh, and the Thanksgiving turkey: It is so grossly fattened up in the farm that it has about as much chance of flying as you do after your pumpkin pie.

No urban legends beats a real story reported by police.

A woman put her baby in a microwave... and of course it died...

Don't know why she did it... still waiting for more news. But it happened a few months ago.

-dh

The weirdest one that stuck with me was the one about assailants hiding under cars in mall parking lots. When a woman steps out of the car or returns from shopping the assailant slices her ankle with a razor, rendering her unable to walk. Ehhwwww. Shiver me timbers. Gross and evil.

The one about the girl spending the night alone in her first apartment with her dog. She's trying to sleep but her dog keeps licking her hand. Eventually the dog goes away, but when she wakes up, her dog is dead and there's a lipstick message on the bathroom mirror that says "Humans can lick too". I know there are many variations on that one, but that's the one I was told.

Some woman gave her poodle a bath and put it in the microwave oven to dry him off. And she went to clean up the bathroom and she heard an explosion from the kitchen and it was her dog that that blew up.

The one with the person in the backseat of your car is really stupid and strange. It doesn't make sense, because any sane person will know that there is someone in the backseat when you open your car. Or anyone that involves a virgin girl, making out in the woods or in an empty house.

Church's Fried Chicken makes African American Gentlemen sterile. John Stossell did a story on it.