Eight-foot crocodile enters home late at night to search for food
A crocodile went inside a house in a village in Etawah in India’s Uttar Pradesh state in search of prey, shocking the family that was fast asleep.
Around 10.30pm on 29 October, the local media reported that the family of Harnam Singh in Jaitia village in Etawah was woken up by the bleating of their goats and when they tried to see why they found the eight-foot-long crocodile near the goats. But the crocodile soon entered one of the rooms, and that’s when all hell broke loose.
The family later called the police who told them to lock the reptile inside the house.
The Singhs stayed awake throughout the night, keeping guard over the locked-up crocodile inside their house.
It was only at around six in the morning when the wildlife department arrived at the scene and started the rescue operation
Wildlife department expert Dr Ashish Tripathi advised the police to keep the crocodile locked up inside the house.
It took the rescue team about an hour to grab the crocodile and safely take it away from the house of Mr Singh, who narrated the nightmare to local media later.
“We don’t know how it entered the house. When we heard the goats’ bleating at night, we realised something is wrong and found a crocodile,” Mr Singh said.
When the family found the reptile, Mr Singh’s mother started shouting, raising an alarm.
When Mr Singh’s daughter tried to see why her grandmother was shouting and opened the door to her room, that’s when the reptile entered the room.
Soon, the neighbours also started gathering around the house. The villagers stayed awake with the family till help arrived early morning on Sunday.
After the rescue operation, Dr Tripathi said that the crocodile was not a fully-grown adult. It was a juvenile that had gone in search of food.
“We checked the crocodile and found that it is eight feet long. The reptile’s age is between 1.5 to 2 years,” he said.
He gave props to the community for not trying to attempt the rescue themselves as the crocodile was “aggressive”.
He said: “The villagers were very scared but we decided against carrying out the rescue operation at night as this crocodile is very aggressive.”
He said that the reptile was from a freshwater canal nearby and that it will be released into its natural habitat.
