Tales Of Escaped Crocodiles Rock Bangkok’s Imagination Residents Looking For Reptiles Supposedly Freed By Flooding

As quick as Thong-yoo Sirisarn could cry “crocodile,” she was fending off suspicious questions from 30 journalists and a small contingent of police officers.

No force of disbelief could budge the 67-year-old woman from her tale: It happened 8 a.m. Thursday. She was sweeping her wooden house by the canal. She heard her grandson yell: “Crocodile! Crocodile!”

“I saw it all - big mouth, big head, almost one meter long,” she said.

Crocodile fever swept Bangkok after floods liberated more than 100 crocodiles from pits in small farms about 130 miles north of the capital. The crocodiles slipped into the Chao Phraya River, which runs into Bangkok, and have reportedly bitten two villagers while they were fishing.

Rising floodwaters commonly bring rats and snakes to the capital, and it was only a small leap of logic for residents to become convinced the escaped crocodiles might also be headed their way.

The possibility that such dangerous intruders could be lurking in the city’s elaborate system of canals is generating more curiosity than fear.

School children crowd the banks of the city’s canals trying to catch a glimpse of the reptiles and residents are trying to bait them to the surface. Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa is skeptical, but has nonetheless ordered officials to keep an eye out.

Over a week’s worth of newspaper and television coverage of impromptu rural crocodile hunts has captured the public’s imagination. Each day newspaper photos have appeared showing a reptile trussed up and tossed into the back of a pickup truck, schoolboys posing on the crocodile’s back.

But crocodile sightings are unheard of in Bangkok and many people are unwilling to suspend their disbelief.