Oh, Jackie!

The creature that lives in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park has rarely been seen. This 1889 photograph by Otto Sarony, from the files of the New-York Hysterical Society, is the only known authenticated image. It was taken well before the popular naming of the creature, which used to be known simply as “the Thing in the Water.” “Jackie” is thought to have migrated down to the city as a sprat through the Croton water system, finding her home at last in Olmsted and Vaux’s reservoir, where she has grown to the size of a particularly belligerent hippo.
Who can say if any of this is true or not? I remain agnostic on the question. Who, finally, knows what lurks in the murk? But there is that strange, suggestive story of the “Battle of Ventilator Number 6,” which makes me wonder. You’ll sometimes hear this up in the watering holes of Irvington, on the Old Croton Aqueduct. That is, if you’re buying the drinks. On or about July 15, 1866, they say, something crawled out of the ventilator shaft pictured above and went rampaging among the local hayricks and, indeed, several of the local rustics as well. Whatever it was, it was only repulsed by a stout counter-attack with pitchforks and Minié balls. An ichorous trail leading to the ventilator was said to glow at night for weeks afterwards. Official history says it was confused Confederate raiders, who somehow hadn’t heard that Lee had surrendered over a year earlier. Pshaw! Locals insist that it was some kind of enormous creature, and that it was bellowing for its mate!
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Another repeated rumor has the Central Park Conservancy playing down talk of Jackie’s existence because of the creature’s penchant for wealthy early morning joggers — she is said to smell the corruption of money with her extended snout — shooting out her long tongue to trip them up into the waters, where she then leisurely masticates them to a frothy pulp. The more cynical say the Conservancy uses the threat of Jackie to keep favored plutocrats in line. John Paulson always scrupulously avoids the sleepy-looking waters of the Reservoir….Thanks to Jenny Hanniver, the N-YHS’s Unnaturalist, for help with this post. She forwarded this image from the Mappa Noveum Mundi of Gustuvus Odaestrock, 1618, depicting some sort of conflict in what we now call Lake Champlain. Most suggestive.