Too Cute!

This one is for Jo…  

OK, so this isn't croc related, but it is far too sweet not to repost.








NB I couldn't establish where this photo came from originally, but the words TipToe Photography were viewable so I am guessing they hold the clue.

Floods Force Thais to Track Down Crocodiles in Bangkok Neighborhoods - voanews.com

17 November 2011

Thailand’s devastating floods swept over a third of the country in recent weeks, killing hundreds and turning hundreds of thousands into refugees fleeing inundated homes and swamped neighbourhoods.  


As if that were not enough to contend with, authorities are searching for dozens of crocodiles that escaped flooded crocodile farms and are being spotted in parts of the Thai capital, Bangkok.

A man carries a crocodile on his shoulder after he and his team killed it at a flooded residential area in Bangbuatong district of Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok, Thailand Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011

A team from Thailand’s Fisheries Department prepares their gear for a survey of a flooded neighborhood in west Bangkok. It includes hooks, nets, and an electronic stunning device.

Despite a meter of water, there is still electricity and people in their homes.  Some stay to ward off thieves, but there are other kinds of intruders.

As the sun goes down, team leader Kamthon Suaroon and his crew prepare to go hunting. “We have just received the information from the people that the crocodile has escaped to this village," he said. 

Kamthon says since the flooding, their three teams have caught nearly one hundred crocodiles outside Bangkok - most near the farms where they had escaped.

He says they caught about ten small crocodiles around Bangkok’s outskirts but none inside the city - until tonight. “We have information from another team, from Ram Intra Road, Ram Intra Road. We can catch one crocodile already," he said. 

Kamthon says the other team found a Cayman between one and a half and two meters long, which he calls “not so big”.

The team will search other places tonight where they find tracks, but no crocodiles. Tomorrow, they will return with traps loaded with chicken to try to nab this neighborhood’s unwanted new resident.

CROCODILE DEATH: Costa Rica's most famous reptile dies

Sad…

Douglas death a tragic end to love story - au.news.yahoo.com

27 August 2011

Sitting on her veranda behind Broome's Crocodile Park, Valerie Douglas absentmindedly strokes her dog, Boondi III, who gazes up at her adoringly.

"She sleeps on the bed with me - sometimes we lie there together and I cry and she licks my face," she says. "Sometimes I wish she could talk - she was the last one to see Malcolm alive."

It's been almost a year since Kimberley conservationist Malcolm Douglas died in a car accident at his wilderness park, and for Valerie his spirit still looms large.

It lingers especially around the battered, beige Toyota Landcruiser parked close to the house. When his body was discovered on September 23, 2010, Boondi III was sitting quietly by his side.

"Whenever I see one of those vehicles coming along the road, that particular make and colour, I think …" Valerie says, with a sharp intake of breath.

Malcolm's death was a sudden and tragic end to a love story which began in the 1960s when Valerie King, a farmer's daughter, met Malcolm Douglas, a charismatic stock and station agent in the Riverina region of NSW.

The pair hit it off, but love didn't blossom until they returned from their travels - three years in Europe for Valerie and Malcolm's epic journey around Australia with David Oldmeadow, resulting in the classic documentary, Across the Top.

The couple married and had two children, Lachlan and Mandy, now both in their 30s. Valerie says she often felt like a single mother as they grew up as Malcolm was by then making several films a year - he went on to produce more than 50.

When he returned from his long trips out bush, he would go straight to the studio and emerge only for meals. As his star rose, Valerie guarded her children's privacy fiercely and it wasn't until they were teenagers that they realised their dad was "a bit different": "He was a man who made really interesting films and ate witchetty grubs".

The couple first visited Broome in the mid-1970s, when Cable Beach was little more than a caravan park. Malcolm was hunting for a place to house rogue crocodiles, after becoming involved with them in the NT in the late 1960s.

He secured five acres of bush blocks and built a shed, a house and a shop before installing his first crocodile ponds. For years, he travelled between Sydney and Broome, sleeping in the shed between trips and adding crocodiles as they were caught.

The Broome Crocodile Park opened in 1983 and was an immediate hit with tourists from all over the world. After business flourished, the couple moved to Broome for good in 1994.

"I never planned to come and live in Broome - he said we'll put three to five years in and see how it goes and that was 20 years ago," Valerie says.

After people kept bringing them native animals, Malcolm decided to start a wildlife park on 30ha of land he'd acquired for his crocodile farm, 16km from Broome.

Starting by breeding 20 female crocodiles from Queensland with the wild crocs, Malcolm slowly turned his fledging farm into a commercial success.

Now, about 300 first-grade skins a year wing their way to France, where they are used to make couture handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars.

"Every year we'd improve and in the end, we were really good at it - about five years ago, the French said 'you are the best crocodile famers in the world'," Valerie says.

"That was the end of it for Malcolm - he'd proved his point and lost interest in it after that."

When Malcolm died, Valerie was in Sydney and looking for an apartment, intending to semi-retire there to spend more time with her children and grandchildren.

At the time, the marriage was going through a tough patch: she was suffering from undiagnosed diabetes and he was dealing with the aftermath of the prostrate cancer which almost killed him in 2003.

He was still a workaholic when she wanted to slow down and after more than four decades of supporting him, Valerie was exhausted and needed a break.

"I sacrificed everything for him - the children, our family life, myself. It was only in the last 10 years that I suddenly realised that he had never noticed that," she says.

"I felt I had done my bit for Malcolm and the businesses. He didn't need me anymore and I wasn't prepared to put the commitment in that he was putting in, all his expansions and great plans."

She admits he could also be "difficult" to work with: "He was very, very critical of people if they didn't measure up to his standards … but to be fair to Malcolm, most of the people who copped it from him really deserved it," she says.

After moving to Sydney, she could never have imagined she would not see him alive again. In the weeks after his death, she went into auto-pilot, trying to console her family and decide on the future of the businesses while dealing with her own grief.

As the sole beneficiary of Malcolm's estate, she was faced with an enormous task.

"He was talking about living until he was 110 and he had so many things yet to do, she says. "Nothing has been catalogued - we've got thousands and thousands of photos and it's just all jammed in cardboard boxes."

Among Malcolm's meagre personal belongings were a handful of Aboriginal artefacts and souvenirs and one "beautiful" suit he wore just twice in his life.

Valerie also had the upsetting task of putting down Boondi II, Malcolm's faithful sidekick, two days after he died: "She was upset because his boots were here on the veranda and she kept sniffing them and hanging around".

"After he died, she went down on the tiles and couldn't get up. We buried her out where Malcolm died - we were all having a bit of a sob, but it was nice."

Fiercely protective family and friends have rallied around Valerie in the past year, for which she is grateful. Mark Jones, who Malcolm regarded as a second son and was very close to, has taken over much of the day-to-day running of the businesses, giving her time to grieve.

"Mark is fantastic - he's my buffer against the world and that leaves me time to recover from Malcolm's death and time to think about where the business is going," she says.

Plans to close the crocodile farm and relocate animals from the Cable Beach Crocodile Park to refurbished ponds at the wilderness park before a major redevelopment of the site are now well underway.

"It's so good to be in total control now because I can control the expenditure - and I've never been able to do that before, because if I said to him we can't afford to do this big whatever it is you want to do, he would throw a little temper tantrum," Valerie says.

Today, she reflects fondly on her years with a man regarded by many as an Australian hero. She used to dream about sitting with him on rocking chairs on the porch, talking about the kids and the grandchildren, and is sad that will never come to pass.

"He was the most amazing man and I had the most wonderful time … I just know that he was the only person I ever wanted to be with, the only person I ever really loved," she says.

"He had a wonderful life - he did everything that he wanted to do. He just sailed straight through life … I just got dragged along in the backwash.

"Now that he's gone, I don't think in terms of the future because I don't know how much longer I've got. And how do you replace him - you can't."

Crocodile shoe...

TV Review: Croc Man – Five - thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

26 August 2011

"EVEN with two men sat on her back, no-one is safe until her jaws are taped."

1. ​

   GREAT SNAP: Shaun Foggett with one of his crocodiles.

That's all we need. Another documentary about Kerry Katona.

Actually, thank goodness, this series is about something far less frightening – crocodiles – and in particular Shaun Foggett who's trying to open a zoo dedicated to them.

"I want everybody else to love them as much as I do," he said.

Good luck with that one.

Shaun had a problem. He'd sold his house and the new owners were due to get the keys in four days' time. However, with their new compound only just ready, there were still 22 crocodiles in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

"I need to get them moved, quick," he said.

True. It's OK to leave a couple of things in the shed when you move – a deckchair perhaps, or an old bike – but 22 crocodiles is going to come as a shock when the incoming householder goes to put his lawnmower in there.

Personally I'd have called Pickfords, but Shaun believed he had a foolproof plan to move the crocs himself.

"I'm going to try to get a towel over their heads," he said, "and walk in and pick them up."

It's a crocodile, mate, not a sparrow loose in the lounge.

"Covering a crocodile's eyes with a towel calms them down," he claimed.

Worth bearing in mind if ever you find one in the bath. Not that Shaun found their violent reputation particularly bothersome. "They have the potential to seriously injure you," he said, "and that gives you a buzz when you work with them."

He's one of the few people to go round the safari park in an open-top sports car.

Finding some of his collection somewhat reluctant to leave, Shaun, in scenes unlikely to be re-shown in a health and safety video, got his mates round.

It's not often, after all, you see five grown men, in a suburban shed, trying to capture a crocodile.

Similarly, when it comes to forming a plan to control the beast, it's rare in a wildlife documentary that you hear someone say: "Sean, do you want me to go back and get a broom from ours?"

Sean's wife Lisa had been particularly understanding. "At first when I met Sean I didn't really like crocodiles," she said.

"I was a bit scared of them, but as time's gone on I am starting to like them."

By the end of next week's episode I expect she'll be holding the broom.

Eventually all the crocs were removed.

"Maybe the people who are moving in would like a Jacuzzi," said Sean of the pool left behind.

Bags you dip your toe in first though.

(I also loved the moment Chris asked about going back to get the broom! Not a common question when wrestling crocs! Jenn)

20 endangered Siamese crocodiles hatch in Laos - google.com

26 August 2011

One of the world's rarest crocodile species has moved a little bit further from extinction with the hatching of 20 wild eggs plucked from a nest found in southern Laos.

Experts believe there could be as few as 300 Siamese crocodiles remaining in the world's swamps, forests and rivers, so the discovery of the nest — the first found in the mountainous, jungle-clad country since 2008 — is a significant step in the rehabilitation of a species that was declared extinct in the wild in 1992.

Since then, tiny populations have been discovered in remote corners of its range, which used to include most of Southeast Asia. Still, the crocs remain critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, the acknowledged authority on the status of global biodiversity.

Under the soft red light of an incubator, the 20 baby crocodiles tapped and cracked their way into the world last week. Their nest was found in the southern province of Savannakhet in June by a team of villagers trained by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which is working to save the species in landlocked Laos.

"The feeling was one of elation," Chris Hallam, who coordinates the organization's crocodile project in Laos, told The Associated Press about the hatching.

"When you look at the global population and the population in Laos it represents quite a significant number of individual crocodiles," he said.

The crocs were hatched at the Lao Zoo, just outside Vientiane, where they were moved to protect them from predators such as snakes and monitor lizards.

Hallam said the crocodiles will be raised in captivity for 18 months before being released back into the wild.

And it seems they won't be alone. Villagers recently found another nest in Savannakhet with 20 eggs inside. Because those crocs are so near to hatching, conservationists decided to leave them where they are with village teams keeping an eye on them.

The Siamese crocodile grows up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length but is generally docile. Their passive nature made them all the easier to hunt. In recent decades thousands were captured and sold to crocodile farms that sprung up across Southeast Asia, feeding a vogue for its renowned soft skin and a taste for its meat.

Several thousand of the crocodiles remain in farms and in zoos, though many have been crossbred with bigger species, reducing still further the numbers of pure Siamese crocodiles.