#Hitler’s pet alligator to be stuffed, put on display in Russia

An alligator rumored to have been Hitler’s personal pet passed away in May at the ripe old age of 84 at the Moscow Zoo – and to honor him, he will be stuffed for posterity and put on display at the city’s Darwin Zoo.

The gator, named Saturn, was born in the wild in Mississippi in 1936 and was originally gifted to the Berlin Zoo that same year. He was held in Hitler’s private collection of animals and found by British soldiers in Berlin after WWII and gifted to the Russians. There are local myths that between the bombing of Berlin and his rescue, Saturn spent years hiding in sewers and basements.

Dimitry Vasilyev, a vet at Moscow Zoo, told the Star there was no doubt Hitler admired the alligator.

“The installation of Saturn in the permanent exhibition is the culmination of six months of work by our taxidermists,” Darwin Museum official, Dmitry Miloserdov, told the Star.

“No reptile of the museum has such a rich biography,” he said. “Moscow Zoo entrusted us with perpetuating the memory of the alligator Saturn.

“He was, without exaggeration, a legend of the zoo and had seen a lot in his lifetime.”

Saturn’s taxidermy display will be “the second birth of Saturn – the story of how ‘Hitler’s alligator’ became immortal.”

Miloserdov also told the paper that in the early 1990s, Saturn witnessed the Soviet collapse and reports said he had “tears in his eyes” when tanks shot the nearby Russian parliament because it “reminded him of the bombing of Berlin.”