a reptilian danger

An Australian man, trapped by crocodiles, waited in a tree for a week before he was rescued (TY, Althouse). He only had two meat sandwiches to satisfy his hunger while he waited for salvation. He saw the crocs in the day and heard them at night, so he knew they didn't stray far from him.

His problems began after he fell off his horse while out in the northern Australia outback.

Dazed and bleeding, he climbed back on his horse and hoped it would lead him home. It was only when he regained his senses he realised he had been taken deep into a crocodile-infested swamp.

"I had to get off the horse and fall on the long 8ft (2.4m) high swamp grass to clear a path, when I fell straight into a crocodile nest," he told Brisbane's Courier Newspaper.

"That spooked me. There were some monstrous tracks and the big ones are never far from the nest.

"I couldn't go back, it was too far and too dangerous, so I headed to the nearest high ground and stayed there, hoping someone would come and find me before the crocs did."

As I mentioned earlier, I had my own reptilian encounter when I went to St. Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach, Florida (see the third picture in this post). Alligators have flatter snouts than crocodiles, so you can determine the creature in the water is definitely an alligator. It was just lying in the water near the shore, and there didn't appear to be any nests around. I felt fairly confident in my safety for two reasons: (1) there were other people around me, gawking and snapping pictures in silence - I was fairly confident I wouldn't be the alligator's first choice if it decided to attack; and (2) numerous trees, with branches low enough for humans to climb, lined the path to where the alligator lay.

Of course, I'm not the only one who's met Florida gators in the wild. Thomas had a very close encounter with one: "And we got chased by an alligator AS BIG AS ME! Dad was so brave he carried me away from the swamp and we got away."