Alexei wasn’t sure how many crocodiles he had. Four, he said with doubt in his voice. Small ones at that, only around 90 centimeters long, but growers, definitely growers.
There are two different types for sale: a Cayman for 15 to 20,000 rubles and a Nile crocodile for 8 to 10,000 rubles.
The Nile crocodile can grow up to five meters long and weigh up to 500 kilograms, while a Cayman only grows to 1 meter 20 centimeters long. Alexei, to his credit, was trying to push the Cayman, explaining the difficulties of raising a man-eating monster reptile who would love nothing better than to snatch you away in its powerful jaws and hold you underwater till dead.
He forgot that last bit but did warn a number of times that the Nile crocodile does take up a lot of space. “If you have a five-room apartment, you can keep it in a separate room and it is not difficult if you have a detached house.”
Eventually you probably need to get a 300-liter aquarium, which after a few years will have to be traded up to a 1,000 liter one with space for walking around.
The Caymans on the other hand can take 10 years to reach a meter long, and he offered to come and take them back if they get a bit difficult.
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“Are they friendly?” I asked.
“A crocodile is not a cat or a dog,” said Alexei, who has a nice line in understatement. “It is a serious animal. You just can’t go in and see it when you want — it can seriously harm you. … You need to be careful.
Alexei has been selling for years, and he is not the only one. Who knows how many crocodiles there are out there as family pets? Or how many are waiting in the sewers. Maybe the scratching noise heard through the thin walls of your apartment is not a cat but a grumpy one-meter Nile who is waiting for the moment when he grows to four meters long.
It is not as fanciful as it sounds.
Two weeks ago, TVS ran a story on Gosha, an 11-month-old Nile crocodile who lives in a small town in the Yaroslavl region. His owners, a Darwin Award-winning couple of the future, take him for walks around town. “His teeth are really sharp, even though they are so small,” they said of their little green Goshchik.
Last month, Kesha, a 25-kilogram Cayman, ran away from her owner, a photographer in Odessa, and spent two weeks swimming in a nearby pond before she was eventually caught.
She won the sympathy of the locals, with the Odessan mayor mordantly saying, “Even crocodiles run away from this life.”
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