Discovery of Crocodile in Melbourne Suburb Has Police Baffled

This saltwater crocodile was found in suburban Melbourne, a location that is definitely not part of its typical natural habitat. Victorian Police

A saltwater crocodile was found wandering in suburban Melbourne on Christmas day and nobody has any idea how it got there.

The crocodile was first found by a couple of walkers out the front of a business address in the suburb of Heidelberg Heights – a location no where near its natural habitat that is typically a lot more tropical.

The closest location that a saltwater crocodile should be in relation to southeastern Melbourne is some 1,230 miles (1,976km) away in Australia’s tropical north. They are definitely not kept as pets.

Melbourne suburb where a saltwater crocodile was found in relation to it's natural distribution in tropical regions.
(Rasmussen AR, Murphy JC, Ompi M, Gibbons JW, Uetz P (2011) [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Understandably police were initially skeptical, until they realized it wasn’t a hoax.

“It’s not known where the croc came from or how it came to be [in] the front yard of the closed business,” said Victorian police in a statement.

The police called in Mark Pelly, a reptile expert, to deal with the situation.

Pelly told radio station 3AW he got a call from the police saying: “there’s a crocodile walking the streets and it’s currently outside a medical center.”

Despite being phoned on Christmas day, Pelly was more than happy to help out.

“This is a phone call I’ve always been waiting for,” Pelly told 3AW. “I found five police members being stared down by a decent sized crocodile, about three-and-a-half foot, and the crocodile wouldn’t back down.”

To catch the reptile, he had a friend try and distract it while he attempted to put something over its eyes.

But the crocodile had other ideas.

“[T]he crocodile was a bit too smart for the both of us and decided to run off into the bush,” Pelley said.

Pelley leaped forward to grab the crocodile by tail, allowing him to pick it up and put it into a box.

Victorian police said the crocodile will remain with Pelly until the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning can collect it.

A male saltwater crocodile grows on average up to 4.9 meters (16.1 feet) in length. Commonly known in Australia as “salties,” there are an estimated 100,000 of them in the country’s tropical north. In the past ten years there have been six fatal crocodile attacks in the country. Two of those attacks were this year, reported the ABC.

From NTD.tv