This story is from August 25, 2019

8-ft crocodile slides into backyard of village home in Ratnagiri

A crocodile, at least 8 feet long, was found ducking in a corner of the backyard of a village house in Ratnagiri early on Friday. The crocodile, possibly swept out of a nearby dam after the recent floods in the Konkan, was captured and released by forest officials.
8-ft crocodile slides into backyard of village home in Ratnagiri
The crocodile was rescued and released into the wild by forest officials
MUMBAI: A crocodile, at least 8 feet long, was found ducking in a corner of the backyard of a village house in Ratnagiri early on Friday. The crocodile, possibly swept out of a nearby dam after the recent floods in the Konkan, was captured and released by forest officials.
It was a little after midnight that Pramod Mate, who lives in Khamte Math village, returned home after attending a function.
As he rode his bike into the compound of his house, his wife and 8-year-old son riding pillion, he saw “something wriggling and lunging towards the verandah in the backyard”, he said.
Then, under the glare of the bike’s headlight, he saw a snout and a scaly body move backwards.
“I told my wife it’s a croc. It was moving in a confused manner, had possibly lost its way,” said Mate whose house abuts a lush green field, located about 10 minutes away from Kapsar dam on the river Savitri.
The three of them quickly bolted out of the gate. “My little boy was scared. But so was my wife and me,” Mate confessed.
He made a quick SOS call to his neighbour Ajay Tatkare who immediately contacted the forest helpline. A team reached within an hour. A flurry of calls later, the neighbourhood was milling around his home at that unearthly hour.
The crocodile was crouching in a corner in the alley right outside the kitchen, said forest guard Rajaram Shinde. A noose was thrown around its body and it was captured using a rope. “We then herded it into an iron cage we had taken along,” said Shinde.

The recent flood in the Konkan has been pushing crocodiles away from their home turf and sweeping them out of rivers, said Sachin Nilak, forest officer (Ratnagiri) who was part of the rescue operation.
A week earlier, another crocodile had been rescued from the railway tracks right outside Chiplun station minutes before a train was scheduled to pull in.
For now, the Mate household is getting over the nightmare of spotting a crocodile outside their home. “I’ve lived here all my life, but never heard of anything like this,” said Mate. “It must be the first time a crocodile has shown up so close. And it’s happened right in my backyard.”
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