If it's coming toward you, it's a crocodile! That's one way to tell. Crocodiles have a bad reputation, especially sea-going crocodiles. I read a book some time back about a young Scottish woman who married a modern Robinson Crusoe. They stayed together for sometime on a Pacific island. Eventually the island beat them and they had to either leave or die of the scurvy. The island they stayed on was not the island of choice. The island they wanted to stay on had a half-dozen sea-going crocodiles. The Australian Government told them they could not go to that island because there was no way they could possibly survive with a half-dozen crocs crawling around at night. Recently we have read and heard on TV about Florida gators attacking pets and people. The population of alligators in Florida continually increases because they are protected by law. I guess as the gator count goes up, the pet count goes down. (When we lived in the mountains of Arizona, the cat population went down. Mountain lions were eating them.) Here is an amazing report that I had never read before from http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=54116 "Most Deaths Caused By Crocodiles "The crocodile attack to claim the most human lives took place on February 19, 1945, when an Imperial Japanese Army unit guarding a stronghold on the Burmese island of Ramree was outflanked by a British naval force. The soldiers were forced to cross 16 km (10 miles) of mangrove swamps to rejoin a larger battalion of the Japanese infantry. The swamps were home to thousands of 4.6-m (15-ft) saltwater crocodiles. Come the next morning, only 20 of the 1,000 Japanese soldiers had survived. Like I said, if it's coming toward you, it's a crocodile! The End Alligator, crocodile, Australia, Ramree, Burma, Japanese, Military, soldiers, deaths, sea-going crocodile, nature, tragedy, mangrove, swamp copyright2006 John T. Jones, Ph.D. |
