‘Sheri garba’ venue gets unusual guest – a crocodile!

VADODARA: Villagers in Piparia, 17 km from Vadodara city, had an unusual guest who seemed to have come to watch their ‘sheri garbas.’
Just when the Navrati revellry was about to end around Monday midnight, villagers noticed this new guest roaming around their garba venue; it was a seven-foot-long crocodile. Scared by the sudden presence of the crocodile, that too near the main village square, panic-stricken villagers immediately called the forest department.The reptile gave a real tough time to the rescuers as it ferociously kept snapping at the rescuer’s stick. The furious crocodile also kept twisting and turning, not allowing the rescuers to even put a jute bag on its eyes, which is usually done to calm the reptile.
“On reaching the village at around 2am, we saw the crocodile was less than 500 m away from the spot where villagers were playing garbas. There was DJ music along floodlights and decorations in the main chowk” said Jignesh Parmar, member of forest department’s rescue team who had rushed there with volunteers from Animal Rescue Trust.
“We finally managed to rescue the crocodile at around 3am and brought it to the nursery in Vadodara at 5am,” he said.
Forest department officials are perplexed as the nearest waterbody is at least a km away from the spot where the crocodile was found.
There have been reports of presence of a crocodile at Pipaliya lake, which is right adjacent to the state highway 158 from where one enters the village. Pipariya has a population of nearly 5,000.
“Five months back, we had kept a cage on the lake’s bank after villagers reported about presence of a crocodile. But we did not trap a single reptile,” said a forester, working in the region.
“It seems the same crocodile entered inside the village on Monday night but we are still wondering how it reached at this spot which is quite far away from the lake,” he said.