Crocodiles on the Adelaide River!

On Monday, Christine and I took a day excursion with Wallaroo EcoTours (highly recommended, btw!) south of Darwin to Litchfield Park. The first part of our tour was a boat ride down the crocodile-infested waters of the Adelaide River.


Here I am holding Snappy, a saltwater crocodile. He's not nearly as cute as Harvey was. :-(


Christine settling in for some serious crocodile feeding.


Me on the boat. Not sure why I'm leaning back like this -- I must have been practicing my defensive maneuver in anticipation of crocodiles lashing out of the water at me...


The banks of the river were just littered with these guys. How creepy is that?


In order to lure the crocs to our boat, our tourguides tempted them with chunks of meet suspended by a piece of twine from a tree branch. It was a highly scientific procedure. Flop the meat on the surface of the water a few times, and once a croc approached, flop the meat on the croc's head if necessary. Things did not look so promising in the beginning, as several crocs simply didn't seem particularly hungry:





And then others made a little bit of an effort, but apparently didn't want to play our game so they gave up:





But then others actually came back for seconds:





Here's a still photo of a croc taking the chunk of meat from us. (This was pretty hard to capture, because it all happens so fast!)


Here's another video of a croc who doesn't wind up getting fed, but it gives you an idea of the macabre commentary we were all subjected to for hours on the cruise:





Another croc did get the food, and was quite energetic about it, as you can see in these photos:


But then he sort of lurched for the front of our boat. This video can't quite capture how it actually transpired, but it was pretty scary for us croc novices:





Afterwards, the croc glared at us menancingly (as you can see in this photo), while we hightailed it out of there.


This cute little guy came along for the ride. As I've said before, this being Australia and all, I can only assume he's deadly if he touches you, spits or tinkles on you, or if you stare at him too long.

But the highlight of the whole Croc Cruise was feeding Hannibal, the king of the river, so named in honor of the character from "Silence of the Lambs." Hannibal is the biggest croc in this section of the Adelaide River, and he really is huge: about 18 feet in length. Here are 3 videoclips showing Hannibal, but again, it's really hard to capture what it feels like to see this massive primal killing machine circling your boat, then disappearing under muddy water, only to reappear somewhere you don't expect him.







Next up, the rest of the Litchfield Park tour!