Thousands in San Francisco are mourning the beloved albino alligator, Claude

Claude doesn’t talk much, he barely moves, and never wears a costume to impress his audience — but on Sunday, hundreds gathered in San Francisco to celebrate the life and legacy of the city’s beloved albino alligator.

A New Orleans-style brass band, a gator-shaped eight-foot tall white sourdough bread, drag queen story time and even a street officially bearing his name, Claude the Alligator Way, the memorial is one of its kind.

The reptile certainly won millions of hearts during his lifetime, but he is also remembered for stealing a 12-year-old girl.

The 10-foot-long, 300-pound white alligator with pink eyes and bad eyesight once stole – and then swallowed – the woman’s ballet shoes, recalled Bart Shepherd of the California Academy of Sciences, Claude’s home for 17 years before his death last December.

“It’s no small feat to get a shoe out of an alligator,” Shepherd told the crowd of Claude’s fans in Golden Gate Park.

It took extensive anesthesia, special tools, and multiple veterinarians and staff members to remove the shoe from inside Claude — a task that was successfully completed, despite a fire alarm going off throughout the building at the time, Shepherd said.

“It’s so inspiring to see San Francisco come out to celebrate this beloved San Francisco icon,” Jeanette Peach, the academy’s director of communications, told the BBC.

Part of why people love Claude so much, Peach said, is that he “embodies something that we think is a real ideal in San Francisco, which is not only accepting but welcoming people for their differences”.

Claude’s albinism, which is rare among crocodiles, gives the perspective of humans feeling a little outcast, Peach said.

“Here is this amazing animal that is a bit of an outcast from what the rest of its species are, but who is loved and treasured and has value,” he added.

Claude “delighted and captivated more than 22 million visitors and showed us the power of animal ambassadors to connect people with nature and science”, the academy wrote on its website.

The reptile, who died of liver cancer at the age of 30 in December, was hatched in 1995 at a Louisiana alligator farm before taking up residence in the academy’s swamp exhibit in 2008.

Since his death, the academy has received thousands of letters from Claude’s fans, writing to say how much the crocodile meant to them.

“Thank you for inspiring so many young children over the years,” one of Claude’s guests wrote in a letter to him. “You remind us that our differences are what make us unique and special and that they are something to be celebrated.”

“You will be in my heart forever,” wrote another. “I miss you so much and thank you for being a part of my childhood.”

Lana Krol, a senior veterinarian at the academy, says that of all the alligators she has worked with, Claude “struck me as the calmest of all”.

“I can say with confidence that I will not meet another gator like Claude in my entire life. I will miss him very much,” said Krol.