Baby crocodile discovered in Sheffield swimming pool

A crocodile hatchling found in a Sheffield swimming pool last Tuesday, February 24, has left residents both amused and uneasy.

Where did it come from? How did it land up in a suburban pool? And perhaps most puzzling of all, where did it disappear to?

Grant van der Walt said he thought his mother was imagining things when she alerted him to the small crocodile, no longer than a man’s foot. She had spotted it in the family swimming pool at their Robbins Road home near Brettenwood Estate at about 6.30am.

“When I first saw it lying motionless at the bottom of the pool, I thought it was some dead leaves. But then it started swimming and went straight into the weir,” said Van der Walt.

He immediately contacted Crocodile Creek owner Craig Watson for assistance, but had to leave for work soon after. As a stopgap measure, he secured the weir lid in the hope it would keep the hatchling contained. By the time Watson arrived, the tiny reptile had vanished.

CCTV footage obtained from Brettenwood Estate’s coastal gate shows the hatchling outside the estate on Monday night at 8.10pm, making its way up Van der Walt’s driveway.

Estate manager Jon Dreyer confirmed that, to his knowledge, there have never been crocodiles on the estate. He suspects the croc to be a runaway pet.

Watson, meanwhile, is both baffled and impressed by the hatchling’s apparent journey. It had to climb a steep driveway and a flight of stairs to reach the swimming pool – all while avoiding neighbourhood dogs.

Only about two percent of crocodile eggs result in animals that survive into adulthood.

Watson said the tiny survivor could have been washed down a short tributary during the recent heavy rains. He suggested someone may have collected a crocodile egg in the wild and it later hatched in a nearby garden, or that the hatchling was carried off by a bird and dropped near Van der Walt’s home.

There are no breeding pairs south of the Tugela River, about 45km away, and no waterways linking his farm south of Ballito to Salt Rock.

Watson said crocodiles reach sexual maturity based on size rather than age, and begin breeding only once they measure between 1.5m and 1.8m in length.

That leaves a slim possibility that a breeding pair, at least 1.5m long, could be lurking in the suburbs. Watson stressed that this is highly unlikely.

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