Fortunately or unfortunately, his wish was not fulfilled. The female
survived although with quite a few bloody marks. Thereafter she kept
her distance from the water as any sane creature would, avoiding Jaws
like the plague.
Much later, when I visited Croc Bank a second time, it was the breeding
season and there were a few nests to be excavated everyday. Each nest
would occupy about the space of a medium size basket. Each egg was at
least three times the size of a hen's egg and they usually numbered
around 30 to 35. Every female-and each one of these measured from about
2 m to 3.5 m-would determinedly guard her nest, refusing to budge when
we tried to chase her into the water in order to clean the pit.
There is now a problem of excess population of the mugger crocodiles
at the Croc Bank partly because they breed twice as much at the croc
bank compared to in the wild and also due to their high survival rate.
In the wild, at the most, one or two survive out of the 30-35 eggs as
many are lost to predators, etc., but here due to artificial
incubation, special enclosures, etc., a large number tend to survive.
Therefore the croc bank has stopped all breeding of this species which
meant that we had a surfeit of eggs for breakfast! We used to scramble
the salty eggs and finish them off with sauce, although a larger number
used to be sent raw for the monitor lizards' breakfast.
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