Crocodiles cause havoc on Brits road

“Help, there are crocodiles on the road!” This is not the usual call for help a neighbourhood watch receives late at night, but this is what the Brits Afriforum neighbourhood watch had to deal with on Thursday night.

“This was a first! A call came through at 22:30 from a motorist who had encountered a crocodile in the middle of the R511 outside Brits,” says Stephan Roos, the chairperson of the neighbourhood watch.

A request for assistance was sent out and a number of security services, neighbourhood watch members and an animal rescue centre responded to manage the scene and traffic on the road.

According to Jac-Louis Horn of Critter Chronicles who regularly responds to snake, reptile and other ‘critter emergencies’, he rushed to the scene, expecting to deal with one crocodile. “When I arrived and asked where the crocodile was, I was told ‘there, there, there, there…‘. There were eight crocodiles on the road and about seven more in the grass along the road,” he laughs.

“I did not bring a team as I thought one crocodile was easy enough to handle. These crocodiles were large… between two and three meters.”

It was established that a crocodile farm was located nearby and the farmer was contacted. “There were too many crocodiles to load onto a vehicle and we decided to pull them back to the farm about 200m away. A fence was apparently cut through which the crocodiles escaped from,” Horn says.

Ropes were tied around the crocodiles and they were guided back to their home. The operation lasted several hours.

“We want to thank Aequitas, PPS and Protego security services and our members who assisted in the pouring rain to resolve the situation,” Roos concludes.