Crocodile Creek founder Peter Watson was almost lunch last week, when a crocodile attacked him in it’s enclosure.
Watson was working with the female crocodile near her nest of eggs, while Durban film company Earth Touch focused their lenses, shooting footage for a documentary on the digging, laying and hatching of crocodile eggs.
The reptile grabbed his foot.
“Crocodiles are like electricity, when the switch is off, you do not have a problem. When the switch is on it is already too late,” said Watson,
Watson said the croc came at him “like a rocket” and that he was shocked when it happened.
“I was so disorientated, I thought I had slipped. It threw me around like a rag-doll, but luckily I did not panic. I tried to move myself so that if it decided to take another bite, I could sacrifice my arm instead of another more important part of my body.”
Earth Touch’s sound specialist, Sakhile Radebe, rushed forward, grabbing Watson’s fallen stick, and banged the croc on the nose, allowing Watson to escape, mostly intact but for a toe nail.
Incredibly, Watson is still walking, albeit with a lot of pain, but he’s in good spirits about the incident.
“This croc is three meters long and about a hundred or 120kgs,” he said, then added, chuckling, “with a nasty attitude.”
“If you work with wood, you will get splinters. If you work with crocodiles, you will get bitten.’
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