Public domain Saltwater croc chillin' before the killin'. image:39389:0::0

If it's springtime in Florida, it must be time for the gators to come indoors. In bathrooms, garages, decks , boathouses and now a kitchen, across the state, as the critters try to get back to their traditional hunting/mating grounds, they're running into the property's human occupiers.

While most such encounters don't amount to much, enough turn nasty to gave a Tampa-area resident a chill when she encountered an eight-footer in her kitchen. Sandra Frosti went into her kitchen to see what was causing odd scratching noises and found an 8ft alligator thrashing around on the floor.

Swearing off margaritas for life, Frosti scooted to her bedroom to call emergency services. The exchange which followed showed how common reptile/human interfacing is in Florida, as the emergency operator's first suggestion was that it might be a really large iguana. Which, we assume, is ok to have kn the kitchen.

From whose tile-clawed floor police and a specialist wildlife trapper eventually arrived to remove the alligator. The police attempted to calm Frosti by assuring her it was nothing personal, that the gator most likely entered the kitchen in pursuit of her cat..
Frosti had left a door between her living room and porch open when she went out, and believes the alligator must have pushed through the screen door on her porch before going into the house through the open door.

Many alligators inhabit ponds in Frosti's neighbourhood and are often seen in and around the ponds or sunning themselves on roads.

No figures are available for the attrition rate of the area's' pet population.

But in Burma, we can tick one bad guy off the list.The state-run newspaper Kyemon reports that a crocodile attacked and killed one of four men under arrest for illegal logging in a Myanmar wildlife sanctuary.

The dead man, Myint Zaw, and three others were accused of illegal possession of mangrove trees believed to have been cut in the Meinmahla Kyun Wildlife Sanctuary.The four were being transported to a detention centre by boat when a crocodile knocked the victim out of the boat and killed him. Eyewitnesses say the croc leaped out of the water, grabbed Zaw and tried to bite him in half before dragging him under.

The sanctuary, southwest of the country's biggest city, Yangon, was established in 1994.It is inhabited by endangered saltwater crocodiles that live in the mangrove swamps.

Both saurian incident are all about the environment. Tampa and its surrounding settlements are built on reclaimed swamp lands formerly occupied by alligators. With their long memories and increased human settlement, gators in the kitchen are bound to happen more often.

In Burma, the .logger chose to be in the wrong, crocodile infested place and the croc obliged by providing the wrong time. Unfortunately, croc attacks will do little to halt the ongoing illegal logging on their turf but it sure cuts down on the repeat offenders.