The human crocodile

Wirda, a saltwater crocodile, was raised from egg by this man and his family in Central Sulawesi. When she was getting a little too large for the house, they released her into the sea.

Several years later, the man answered a knock at the door to find Wirda waiting patiently to come in. She never left. Believing that Wirda had come back to find her true family, the man gave her a spare mattress in her own bedroom and built her a pool that took up a quarter of the house.

The seven-foot crocodile is now part of the family, appearing in the family photos that adorn their wall. She lives off a staple diet of rice and eggs and, when she gets lonely at night, moves from her mattress into the family bedroom where she sleeps under her father’s bed.

The understanding that she is human stems from a local belief that crocodiles with four fingers are man-eaters, whereas those with five are fellow humans. As far as we know, there is only one species of crocodile inhabiting the waters in this area – the saltwater crocodile.

“Right, she wants to go to the pool now” announced the man as I was lying belly-down in front of the gaping beast. I wasn’t sure how he knew, but I got up and moved out of her way quickly. Right enough, Wirda heaved her body from the floor and lumbered through the house to her large concrete pool out back.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Postcards from the field. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.