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 NOT TOO MANY YEARS BACK,
a lady in the Philippines gave birth — to a mudfish. This
was an exceptional event. Everyone knows mudfish are not Catholic.
Her proud father raced to the grocery store to buy milk when he
should have made a beeline for the hospital to have his DNA tested.
He might have enquired at the aquarium as well as to whether Willy
was finally free, and who it belonged to. The religious proclivities
of this pelagic wonder were never fully determined, and Angeline
Dysabel (as she was named) died shortly after of an overdose of
lactose. Had she been a true Catholic she would have insisted on
a Diet of Worms.
The Philippines
has its church-going fish (which are always a great tourist draw)
and Hongkong for a moment has, well, a croc. Yes there’s Crocodile
fashions which does a just-this-side-of-legal take on Lacoste, but
I’m talking about the real McCoy. A saltwater crocodile. This
fellow’s not in the zoo. He lives in Yuen Long. A former resident
of a public housing apartment, he slipped away one day. Unlike Elsa
the lioness, the Yuen Long croc was not born free. As a Hongkong
resident he enjoyed full rights to luxuriate in a 100sq ft three-bedroom
flat, subjected daily to weepy Korean sitcoms and ear-piercing karaoke
gabble.
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I fully side with
the greens. It is cruel to keep tarantulas, crocodiles, pythons,
giant iguanas and mothers-in-law indoors. They should be set free
and wrapped up in great big Christmas gift boxes to be left in Stephen
Spielberg’s backyard for aliens to pick up.
I fully side with the greens. It is cruel to keep tarantulas, crocodiles, pythons, iguanas and mothers-in-law indoors...
The Hongkong crocodile
has become a major star and will, no doubt, graduate into a top
crowd-puller and income-earner for the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
Crowds gathered to cheer him as week after week he evaded capture.
Marine department SWAT teams trawled the creek, while others arrived
with forks and knives and charcoal cinderblocks looking for a meaty
barbeque. Disappointment awaited them all.
The Hongkong authorities
finally called in Australian crocodile hunting legend John Lever.
So did Lever wrestle the croc onto the mat with his bare hands before
teaching him the samba? Nope. Lever flew back to Oz throwing up
his hands in despair. What was he thinking? HK crocs are as stupid
as their thick-skinned cousins Down Under who immediately flock
to cameras and pose for anyone in a kubra hat for five bucks?
HK crocs are a
savvy bunch. So what did Lever do? He waded into the creek in an
attempt to catch the croc with his bare hands. Legend or not, I
can’t think of anything more dangerous. Yuen Long Creek is
packed with enough industrial pollutants to melt a tank, not to
mention the fish that, by now, have surely mutated into unknown
life forms. Yuen Long Creek is what Baywatch Nights is made of —
without the women and the cleavage but with all the scary music
and large hairy men splashing about in dark, misty settings.
Lever
waded in to catch the croc with his bare hands. Very dangerous.
There are enough pollutants here to melt a tank
Needless to point
out, the croc was not buying any of it, especially the large hairy
men. Lever put chicken in traps and the croc sniffed. They tossed
in assorted meats and he looked the other way. Had someone offered
him a tuxedo, a phone and a Dial-A-Dinner menu the croc may have
been encouraged to shed his reticence, but no. The barrage of traps
and baits continued. And more tourists arrived.
Animals and tourists
make great bedfellows. Watching lions in the wild is one thing.
Watching a crocodile cross the road in Hongkong is another. Visit
Edwin Lutyens’ stately New Delhi with its broad boulevards
and shade trees and you’ll come across hordes of macaque monkeys
swarming over parliament and the adjoining government offices.
The primates got
so invasive — stealing defence files and state secrets and
even disrupting a press conference for visiting US Secretary of
Defence Donald Rumsfeld — the government finally stepped in.
They didn’t call John Lever who was having a hard enough time
getting the Yuen Long goo off his clothes. They went to the Supreme
Court, which finally ruled that the capital should be monkey-free.
Easier said than done.
Europeans are a
lot less uptight about animals. Soon they will be travelling everywhere
with them. The European Commission has proposed issuing EU passports
for pets. A photo is optional. Perhaps this means you might attach
a picture of Marilyn Monroe on your dog’s passport if she
happens to be a pug or another cosmetically challenged breed.
Apparently though,
“More unusual pets such as mice and reptiles will not need
a passport to travel within the EU.” So there you have it
— a solution to Hongkong’s woes. If Cathay can spring
a ticket, the Yuen Long croc could be off on a sightseeing junket
shortly. But does he speak French?
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