Runaway crocodiles found in Ba Ria-Vung Tau canals, streams

Nguyen Ngoc Chau was working on his paddy field in Chau Pha Commune last week when he heard a splash in a nearby canal. A crocodile was lifting its head off the water.

He said: "I panicked a bit at first. I thought I have to capture it or it would become a threat to others, and so I fetched my brother."

His brother incapacitated the three-kilogram animal with a taser, and the brothers took it home and cooked and ate it.

A few hundred meters away another local said crocodiles began to show up at the end of October when authorities divert water from the canals.

"They were swimming 50 m away from my house. Some people in the neighborhood caught three of them, each weighing around 3 kg."

Nguyen Tan Hiep, chairman of Chau Pha Commune, said five or six crocodiles have been captured by locals from canals and streams.

Tran Van Cuong, director of the Ba Ria-Vung Tau Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said crocodiles raised by a local resident escaped but have all been captured.

"The facility is not safe. Authorities have shut it."

Local forest rangers said Monday that a man in Tan Ro Hamlet raised 175 crocodiles, each weighing up to six kilograms, in cages measuring 100 square meters.

At the end of October 20 of them escaped while the cages were being cleaned, they said.