Q: When is a crocodile not a crocodile?

A:  When it's a movie prop!

A reported sighting of a crocodile in the River Thames last week sent the public into a tailspin.

. . .

But on Saturday another local man, Michael Law, said it was a dummy man-eater from the scene from the film [Live And Let Die] where 007 Roger Moore has to jump across the backs of alligators.

Mr Law said the prop was kept on an island on the Thames in Reading by boat expert Peter Wallace, former head of Caversham Boat Service, who worked on several James Bond and Indiana Jones films.

He said the fake alligator must have been washed from the island during floods and had been spotted by Mr Smith as it bobbed about on the river.

. . .

Crocodile expert Shaun Foggett, director of Crocodiles of the World in Witney, Oxon, doubted that they could live through an icy English winter.

"We get asked about a lot of these sightings and I think it is people letting their imaginations run away with them" he said.

There's more at the link.

I must admit, I was highly amused at the panicked reactions to the imagined crocodilian presence.  Talk about PSH!  On the other hand, if true, it might have made this year's swan upping a rather more interesting, entertaining - and potentially lethal - ceremony . . .





Peter