I don’t want to bury the lede here, so let’s start with the most important part: a month ago, two crocodiles were stolen from a mobile zoo in Sydney.
The pair of crocs – named Snap and Crackle respectively – measured somewhere between 80 centimetres and 100 centimetres each and were discovered missing from their enclosures on George Crescent in Sandy Point in early March.
Understandably, the owners were very concerned with their welfare, believing that they would not be able to survive out in the real world. It appears, however, that for at least one of them, that was not the case.
Peakehurst man Aaron Hughes, who spotted the croc, lives a few suburbs away from Sandy Point and put two and two together almost immediately:
“There had been a bit of a running joke among the street and with my friends that those crocs are going to be turning up in a few years being 2 metres and 3 metres long, so we sort of realised straight away where it was from.”
According to Hughes, there had already been a few sightings of the croc along the Georges River.
Being the conscientious man that he is, Hughes decided to take the crocodile home and chuck it in the bath until they could figure out what to do with it:
“Both my wife and I looked at each other and were having a bit of a laugh about what to do next, but we were mainly concerned for the animal’s welfare. Basically, it did look a bit malnourished and we weren’t sure what to do.“As we’ve all done, we’ve seen Steve Irwin the crocodile hunter and we were well versed in maybe coming up behind it and grabbing it as it wasn’t moving too quickly.“I’m a fisherman at heart and I do like to sometimes say that my catch is a little bigger than what is real, but it was quite small so really I could just walk up on it and it didn’t really move at all and I was able to pin it behind the neck.“Didn’t need to sit on it or anything like that, just picked it up and walked it up to the house.”
Hughes became convinced pretty early on that this one was probably Snap, not Crackle:
“We think we managed to get hold of Snap because he did have a few goes when we were bringing him up to put him in the bath.”
Look at this happy little fucker:
Pictured: An extremely plucky crocodile.
Whichever croc it was, he was eventually collected by local police, who are keeping it safe until the zoo owners can come get it.
The cops (and also me) are recommending that if you see a croc, probably don’t pick it up:
“I can’t say I’ve seen a crocodile wandering the creek at Peakhurst and hopefully we never will again.”“Crocodiles are a dangerous beast and can kill, although this one was only 80 centimetres in length.“The best thing to do is to notify police and we will do our best to make sure it’s captured and returned to its rightful residence.”
The thieves who took the crocodiles in the first place are still at large.
Source: ABC.
Photos: Aaron Hughes.
