Elligator

This is the only known photo of an elligator. Image found on a cell phone in a building lobby. Owner of phone never found.

The Elligator (Otis carnivorae) (also called "eLegator" but this should be avoided, because it is a trademark of a trailer gate lift system) is a rare but often lethal carnivorous organism that lives in urban or suburban areas, wherever multistory structures have been built. The elligator sneaks into a building at night, often aided by a closely related symbiotic beast called the Staircase, who opens the exit door and the elligator slithers in. He then finds the domestic Elevator, and after a fierce struggle, devours and digests the Elevator, taking his place in the space occupied by the prior faithful servant (this is the origin of the slang term "getting the shaft," although it was the tame elevator who lost in this case.)

Diet

The elligator's normal diet consists primarily of unassuming humans such as office workers and apartment dwellers (and their pets, if present). Much like his distant relatives, the reptiles, he does not need to feed often and this ironically is what makes him so insidious and difficult to detect. An elligator may operate reliably for months or years, transporting passengers to their desired floors, with almost no sign of being anything other than an ordinary lift. Unpredictably he becomes so hungry at which point the elligator will gobble up the first (usually solitary) person that naively enters his maw. The hapless victim is quickly digested, leaving almost no traces except a pen or mobile phone dropped in terror.

Origin

Little is known of the elligator. It is speculated that it is a hybrid of the American alligator and the dumbwaiter that once was commonly found in large homes many years ago. The following is pure conjecture: During and after America's civil war (1861-65) many Southern mansions either were destroyed or simply fell into disrepair. Many dumbwaiters were either released or escaped into the wild. These dumbwaiters, no longer (uwittingly) fed regularly by kitchen servants (who faithfully hoisted the meals to "Massa" upstairs and of course were blamed and punished for disappearing food) wer forced to fend for themselves and became feral. Inter-breeding naturally occurred with the native alligator.

These early hybrids, or "gator-waiters" as they were colloquially known, had a harsh existence, often having to survive as coal hoppers or, if they were lucky, conveyor belts at a slaughterhouse. A few decades later, with the rise (literally) of modern skyscrapers and lesser multi-story buildings, the elligator returned to its ecological niche. The elligator is a distant relative of the common household appliance pest, the herbivorous Dryer Lamprey (see separate entry). The Dryer Lamprey is found inside many clothes dryers and feeds primarily on lint (therefore it is a symbiote, helping humans) but also occasionally will grab a sock (thus making it technically a parasite.)