Kangaroo Court? How about Crocodile Court?

For those of you with dogs you can attest to the fact that pets can make cleaning the house a little tricky sometimes. While the vacuum cleaner runs our dogs leaps and barks at it incessantly until it is finally turned off. Cats like to attack fluffy dusters and the like whenever they are in motion and oft times when they have been temporarily sat down to answer the phone. Fish brazenly pee in their water once you have cleaned it and so on… So when I heard of this story out of Canberra I thought to my self “it figures”. I also thought that vacuuming while a 65lb dust bunny leaps at gnashes its teeth at the vacuum suddenly doesn't seem so bad. After cleanup efforts from Cyclone Monica were under way, a chap by the name of Freddy Buckland (whose name sounds suspiciously like a hobbit's to me) was in the process of cleaning up a round a roadhouse when he had a problem similar to my dog vs. vacuum one. Okay so the vacuum was a chainsaw and the dogs was a 4.4 Meter (15 foot) saltwater crocodile named Brutus.

I guess that after all the racket and chaos of the storm poor Brutus had a cracking headache and Freddy there was inconsiderate and fired up his two stroke, tree shredding device. Brutus, cursed with the inability to ask Freddy to stop all that racket, decided to go over and discuss it in his own way. Brutus used the very tree that Fred was trying to remove for leverage and launched himself at him. Freddy tossed the saw at him and Brutus proceeded to beat the saw into the ground until it begs for mercy and stalls in self defense. He then took his new chew toy into his pond for almost an hour before cleanup workers managed to liberate it from his pen by using a bent piece of rebar. This story reinforces the importance of manners and consideration as I can say that it I was sleeping and Freddy tried that near me I’d probably react in a similar way, although instead of a pond I’d end up snuggled back into bed with my arm wrapped around the saw in case someone tried to start it up again.

I also have to throw a nod to the Australian legal system, because if this was in the USA you can be sure that the chainsaw would be currently seeking legal counsel to initiate a lawsuit against the crocodile seeking large sums of money for pain and suffering. “As a chainsaw, your honor, my client is unable to work for a living as every time he tries to start up for work he is crippled by an overwhelming fear that he is about to be eaten”. Now there's a trial I'd watch on TV!