Raising Croc-Wise Kids

Of everyone this book is written to protect, children carry the heaviest share of the loss. The record is plain about it. In the most careful study of Nile crocodile attacks in South Africa and eSwatini, Simon Pooley and his colleagues found that around half the victims were fifteen or younger, and roughly six in ten were twenty or under. Teenage boys, the ones sent out to fish and to fetch and the most likely to take a chance in the shallows, stand out sharply in the figures. As this book has already said, size is no comfort here: an animal well under the length that threatens a grown adult can still take a child. No comfort at all. That is the sentence behind the statistic, and it is why teaching the young is not a nice addition to crocodile safety. It is the centre of it.