CROC ATTACKS ON LAND.
Are you safe if you are on land? Well, a shark won’t get you, but a big bad croc might. Croc attacks on land seem to be getting a bit more common.
CROC ATTACKS ON LAND AND YOU ARE SAFE ARE YOU NOT?
You’ll be safe if you don’t go into the water.
“Ah, bah! No such thing as croc attacks on land.”
How about this story. It is a true story about one of those croc attacks on land. A rare bird, indeed.
CROC ATTACKS ON LAND – THIS ONE DID HAPPEN.
The Pan QUee family did what they had done many times before and camped beside a creek in the N.T. The location was an isolated creek near Woodykuppledere outstation, about 200km south of Darwin.
Well, it doesn’t pay to camp here all year round.
They camped on the bank, in the Dry season, which is also not too advisable these days.
Why? Because crocs are attacking here, there, and everywhere.
CROC ATTACKS ON LAND AND WHY IS THAT.
Why were they there?
This was a camping and fishing expedition to the Daly River floodplain, south of Darwin.
Now what happened?
Unbelievably, a 4m crocodile came up a steep bank and to the top , which was 2m above the water level. The crocodile attacked at about 11pm on Saturday the family members were asleep in a mosquito shelter.
This isn’t the actual croc, but he is about the right size.
CROC ATTACKS ON LAND – A SCENARIO.
Mr Pang Quee, who was partly incapacitated, was attacked.
His wife, Lena Pang Quee, 55, tried to help him, and she ended up in a serious but stable condition in Royal Darwin Hospital.
Their son Peter, was sleeping at his mother and father’s feet when he heard his mother yell out.
“I jumped up and saw the crocodile rip straight through the mesh,” he said.
He forced the crocodile to retreat by poking his fingers into its eyes as it tried to drag his mother away.
“It was something my father had told me to do if we were ever attacked,” said Peter, who had previously accompanied his father crocodile-hunting.
“It came in from my parent’s side and my mother could see it was going for dad. He’s been left weak down one side after having a stroke and she just threw herself between him and the croc.
She was pulling him out of the way when the croc grabbed her around the body. I must have stuck my fingers about an inch into its eyes and it stopped as if it didn’t know what to do. It dropped my mother and went up on to its hind legs before spinning around.
It hit a small tree near the tent and stopped for a minute and we wondered if it was going to attack again.
I went and grabbed a shotgun from the car but by the time I loaded up it had gone back over the bank into the creek.”
Peter said the family had believed they were safe from crocodile attack because of the steepness of the 2m bank beside their camp.
THE GUARDIAN SAYS
“About 8.5% of attacks occurred on land, including two instances of people being attacked in their tents, one attack listed as “near crocodile nest”, one listed as “sleeping near water”, and one as “on beach”.”
The chief wildlife ranger with the Northern Territory Conservation Commission, Ross Belcher, said it was the first report he had heard of a crocodile entering a tent.
Don’t go into the water has a kind of strange ring about it now, doesn’t it?