Around 2 am on Wednesday, Thacheth Sabu heard a faint knock on the door of his house at Athirappally in Thrissur district of Kerala. He and his wife Nirmala ignored it and went back to sleep. Around 5 am, Nirmala woke up and opened the door, as usual, only to find an unusual guest at her doorstep — a two-meter-long crocodile. It had landed up on the verandah on their house on the first floor of the building. The family immediately alerted the forest department officials.
Incidentally, the house is located near the Chalakkudy River, where crocodile sightings have increased in the last year. Speaking to TNM, Charpa Range officer T Ajikumar said that the forest department officials reached the spot as soon as they received information from the family and tried to release the reptile into the river. However, it was a Herculean task.
“After a lot of attempts, we tied the crocodile with a rope. With the help of residents in the area, we released the animal into the river, near the lower banks of the Athirappilly waterfalls. There were no injuries on the animal and it was found to be healthy," said Ajikumar.
According to the forest department officials, the crocodile was released to the river after a three-hour-long effort. Watch the video of the recue here:
The crocodile is around 10 years old and two meters long. “It is believed that the crocodile crawled out of the river and reached the house," said the forest official.
The forest department officials said that since crocodile sighting has increased in Chalakkudy river, they have warned people in the area to not bathe in the river.
Soon after the Kerala floods in 2018, a man, who returned to his house in Chalakkudy to check the condition of his house, found a crocodile inside his house. The neighbours quickly caught the crocodile, bound it with ropes and released it into the river.