Morbid interest, all right.

I live across from what has to be one of the prettiest public parks in the country. Most days, I take a spin (or two) around the Boston Public Garden. It's lovely in the winter, when it's snow capped, when there are white fairy lights on the evergreen bushes and along the bridge, and when folks are skating and playing hockey.

In the fall, it's very nice when the leaves turn color. In early spring, when the weeping willows start turning green and the flowering trees are in flower, walking through the Garden gives you hope that, indeed, we really have turned the corner on winter.

Throughout the year, the Make Way for Ducklings statues are decked out for whatever holiday we're celebrating and/or whatever sports team is doing well. (Not too much to cheer for of late, but the other day they were decked out in Boston Free Jack gear, the Free Jacks being Boston's entry in a new professional rugby league.) Whatever they're wearing, the dressed up ducklings are great fun to see!

The Public Garden is at it's best from mid-late April until fall, when the flower beds are full. During those months, the beds are drop-dead gorgeous, meticulously maintained, and change every month or so. This is also the time of year when the fountains are flowing, and when the swan boats are out and about in the lagoon. The swan boats are pedal driven, and it's completely chill to just take a ride around the lagoon. Serenity! I usually hop one once a summer, even when I'm not showing someone around town. 

And by June there'll be a flotilla or two of newly hatched ducklings trailing their mothers around. Mack! Pack! Ouack! The real thing. 

Sure, there are way too many fat, aggressive squirrels. And way too many crackpots feeding them, even though there are signs all over the place stating that feeding the wildlife is verboten. 

There are, of late, way to many Canada Geese, leaving their scat everywhere they waddle. Honestly, can't they just poop in the lagoon like the ducks and swans do. (In the summer, there are a couple of swan in residence.)

Overall, being able to stroll around the tranquil Public Garden is a joyful experience. Restorative. Good for the psyche, good for the soul.

There was a time, back in ought-one, at the dawn of the 20th century, when things were a bit more exciting. That's when someone decided that the nation's first botanical garden would be a fine place to host baby alligators.

Great Floridian beasts these were not. But the alligators were, as you’d expect, quite a spectacle in often-chilly New England.

There are several newspaper articles from the time that make reference to the alligators, which lived in a basin — or pond — near the Arlington Street entrance among a “splendid” array of lilies. Accounts differ, but for some time there were between three or four alligators on the grounds, striking additions to the many other exotic features of the Public Garden back then. (Source: Boston Globe)

"Striking additions" that lived on rats. 

Now, the Public Garden is no stranger to rats.

The Public Garden is located on the Flat of Beacon Hill which, like Boston's Back Bay, is land that was reclaimed from the ocean. They don't call it the Back Bay for nothing. 

This is a city, so there are going to be rats galore anyway, but landfill makes for an especially pleasant environment for them.

Since I'm only in the Public Garden during the daylight hours, I don't get to see too many rats, but if you're walking around the 'hood at dusk or after, a scurrying rat crossing your path is a pretty familiar occurrence. So is spotting a flattened rat. (One down! Seventy-two trillion to go!)

But what was happening at the Public Garden in 1901 was a rat of a different color entirely. 

“Some Objection Raised to Feeding Those in the Public Garden Pond with Live Rats and Mice,” read the sub-headline of the August Globe article.

The newspaper reported that the alligators would be placed in the Public Garden when “warm weather comes,” and be fed by park officials once per week.

But residents often had other plans: tossing rodents they’d caught in traps to the gators for fun. Hardly a highbrow affair.

“Live Rats Thrown to Hungry Alligators,” read a headline in the Boston Post on Aug. 9, 1901. “Public Garden Exhibition Attracts Morbid Interest of Women and Children.”

Nothing like a bit of morbid interest to occupy the women folks and the kiddies. After all, it had been a while since Massachusetts was holding public hangings for Quakers and witches et al. That morbid interest has to come out somewhere. Isn't that what NASCAR's for?

Here's how the Post described the alligator feeding:

“The victim is thrown into the pond,” it read. “As it splashes the water the three alligators start towards it. Kicking and squealing it is dragged beneath the water ... they fight violently, the mud is stirred from the bottom of the shallow pond. Then through the muddy water appear splotches of red. The crowd slowly disperses. The fun is over — for now.”

Oh, what fun.

Come winter, the alligators were fished out of the basin and housed elsewhere for the duration. Not clear how many years the practice of keeping alligators in the Public Garden kept up. 1901 was clearly a high point.  

Urban legend has long been full of stories of baby alligators ordered from the back of comic books, and flushed down the toilet when mothers got sick of having them in their kids' bedrooms. Thus, the legend held, most big city sewer systems are full of alligators. Maybe they weren't flushed down the toilet, but in truth, when alligators do show up in cities, they're usually discarded pets. Not so much fun having that scaly little reptile around once it gets big enough to eat you.

But, with global warming, alligators may be on the move, heading north. Their natural habitat already extends as far as North Carolina, but if winters keep getting milder, there's nothing to keep them from expanding their range. Swell!

Wait a few years and we may see alligators snapping around after the swan boats, hoping that a tourist tosses them some Doritos. Or rats, if they happen to have any on them.

If alligators could take out the rat population but were otherwise harmless, I'd say 'come on up.' But I'd rather chance an occasional rat sighting than have to worry about an alligator grabbing me off a path in the Public Garden and dragging me under.

Meanwhile, I'm just as happy that there aren't crowds gathering to throw live rats to alligators across the street from where I live. Sure, there might be some folks who'd still think it was great fun, but I'll satisfy my morbid interest elsewhere. Obituary page, please!

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A nod to my brother Rick, who's apparently a much more rabid online Globe reader than I am, for pointing this story out to me.