Police warn public about dangers of creating "meth-gators" in Alabama

Alabama is having a hard time of it lately. At this point, the state may be making a bid to become the setting for a real-life reality version of Stranger Things. Roll-tide-shouting residents already have plenty to be afraid of with an all-too-real outbreak of killer wasps, but hold your stinger, please, because an odd new menace could be hitting the state. Alabama's hottest new things to be afraid of are ... meth-gators.

You read that right, and no, we're not kidding. The name alone conjures horror and makes you instantly think of creatures that are part gator, part meth, and all kinds of crazy. The issue has arisen due to a drug bust, not in Alabama, but in Tennessee. According to a Loretto Police Department Facebook post, if you flush your drugs down the toilet there, apparently Alabama could become infested with alligators that are high on those drugs.

The story almost reads like the beginning of another classic B-horror movie — police in Tennessee arrested a drug dealer while he was attempting to flush his stash of methamphetamine down the toilet. They found 12 grams of meth and 24 fluid ounces of liquid meth that had yet to be flushed.

The Loretto police then put the statement up on Facebook, asking people (nicely) not to flush drugs down their toilets:

"Folks…please don’t flush your drugs m’kay. When you send something down the sewer pipe it ends up in our retention ponds for processing before it is sent down stream. Now our sewer guys take great pride in releasing water that is cleaner than what is in the creek, but they are not really prepared for meth. Ducks, Geese, and other fowl frequent our treatment ponds and we shudder to think what one all hyped up on meth would do. Furthermore, if it made it far enough we could create meth-gators in Shoal Creek and the Tennessee River down in North Alabama. They’ve had enough methed up animals the past few weeks without our help."

They end the message by suggesting that if people have drugs and want to get rid of them, then they should ... call the police.

So apparently meth-gators aren't exactly a thing ... yet. We're still in the "Let's make sure this doesn't happen" phase. Is it a coincidence that Crawl, a scary gator movie, is sliding into more movie theaters this week? That movie definitely has gators in it, but does it have gators that are high on meth? Is a meth-gator inherently more frightening than a regular gator? How soon until we get warnings about meth-sharks? Would Jason Statham ever think about punching a meth-shark in its meth-addled face?

So, to review: Residents of Loretto, please call the police instead of flushing your drugs. Why? Because we don't want Alabama to have to deal with meth-gators, and we don't want to have to deal with the screenplays that will surely come afterward.

(via WCYB News 5)