‘How would Snag go in the wild?’
With his hands sliding into the pockets of his jeans, Stone leaned his shoulder against the glass wall to watch the crocodile.‘Snag would have never survived.He was like Bones, pretty knackered when I found him in one of my back billabongs, which was nothing more than mud during a really long dry season.So I brought him home.’
‘How do you transport a crocodile?’
‘Bones and Snag were so stuffed they didn’t even put up a fight when I put them in the sling.It was the easiest way to fly them home and I could drop them straight into these makeshift ponds that I’d just dug out with a bobcat.Back then, I ran hoses to source water straight from the river, because I didn’t even have a pump and hadn’t even thought about building ponds.I’d only brought them here to help them recover.’He patted the glass panelling.‘But after many late-night beers while handfeeding these two, I ended up building their personal resorts around them, making sure they had plenty of room.’
‘And you feed them daily?’
‘Every few days.It’s how they’re built.’He gave a casual shrug.‘Once a month, I’ll do a haul of live fish from one of my creeks and drop them in their ponds so they can play.That keeps them busy for days.’
‘And that one.’She pointed to the largest pond of all.‘Who lives in there?’
‘Caesar.’Stone pushed off the wall, opened a glass door and walked right up to a massive beast that looked like a log at first.
‘Stone!’ The panic in her voice echoed around them.
‘Calm down.This guy is too old to move around, not with his arthritis.’Stone walked up to the largest crocodile Romy had ever seen.
‘How big is he?’
‘Caesar is five-and-a-half metres long.And for your next question, he last tipped the scales at over two thousand pounds.Oh, and he’s very, very old.’Stone held out the dried fish right near the beast’s nose.‘Open up, big fella.’
The crocodile’s jaws slowly opened, and Stone tossed it right into his huge mouth.Teeth were missing.But his sheer size was impressive, with his battle-scarred body so dark and weather worn.Being as big as a boat, he’d be the scariest thing you’d hate to see on the river—it was the stuff of horror movies.
‘What happened to Caesar?’She asked quietly, to not draw the beast’s attention.
Yet Caesar held the fish in his mouth, as his front paw gave a heavy thud to push him around in a slide to allow his alien-like eyes to lock on her.
Romy gulped air.
‘Caesar likes you.’
‘How do you know?’The skin pricked along her spine as she took a wary step back.
‘Caesar has his eye on you.’
Again, she took another step back from the glass, her hand to her throat as she struggled to swallow down her fear.‘That’s not comforting, you know.’Caesar was truly the stuff of nightmares.
Stone didn’t seem fussed as he grabbed a large broom and began brushing down the sides of the massive monster.‘Caesar gets algae build up and likes a good scratch.’
Caesar raised his massive snout, arching back to lift his wide chest, extending his neck upward while resting on his front paws.It looked like a yoga pose.
‘Is Caesar doing the upward-facing dog yoga pose?’Even if he groaned like an old dog, with a dried fish hanging out of his mouth.
‘I believe he is.’Stone’s laugh made her fear disappear.
She stepped closer to the glass wall surrounding Caesar’s expansive pen.‘How did you end up with Caesar?’They must have needed a crane to get him inside.
‘I found him walking in the middle of nowhere.’
‘What do you mean?’
Stone used the wiry broom like he was scrubbing at a muddy floor, rubbing the hard bristles against the crocodile’s side as it groaned again.‘Caesar was strutting his stuff in the middle of this dried out flood plain.My guess is he’d lost his battle for his territory and got kicked out of his home, because he was pretty banged up when I found him.’
‘They fight each other?’
‘The males do, for territory.And if food is scarce, they’ll eat their own kind to survive.They don’t do retirement well.’
