Fishermen catch crocodile in Rio Grande Sun Oct 8, 10:02 PM ET
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Mexican fishermen captured a 7.5-foot crocodile in the Rio Grande, the river that divides part of Mexico and the United States, authorities reported on Sunday.
Illegal migrants from Mexico frequently swim or ride inner tubes across the Rio Grande to reach the United States. Crocodiles do not normally inhabit the river, and authorities suspect it may have been brought to the area as a pet and then released into the river by its owner.
The reptile was caught on a fisherman’s line on Saturday in a sparsely populated stretch of the river on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. It was turned over to a local animal shelter.
The crocodile weighed about 130 pounds and appeared to be young and in good condition, said Jose Moreno Araiza, a commander of the Nuevo Laredo fire department, where the fishermen first brought the reptile in the back of a pickup truck.
It was then turned over to the local Animal Protection Society, whose president, Gina Ferrara, said it would be kept for the time being in improvised holding area with a pool of water. Federal environmental officials were informed of the capture and will eventually decide what to do with the crocodile.
UPDATE: Dems: Crocodiles should be given citizenship, franchise, in-state tuition.
Reps: The Rio Grande should be stocked with crocodiles. Big ones.
And stingrays. ‘Cause, as everyone knows, if the crocs don’t get ‘em, the stingrays will.
Highly unlikely that the animal is a croc.
First: The only crocidiles native to the Western Hemisphere live in extreme S. Florida and [possibly] Cuba. Long swim to get to Laredo.
Second: Crocs are notably unsuitable as pets. They are far too aggressive. It is much more likely that the animal in question is a cayman [commonly kept as pets] or an alligator [native to at least the general area, and quite common at least as far down the Texas coast as Corpus Cristi].
Third: In Spanish [though the origin of the word ‘alligator’ is from the Spanish for ‘big lizard’] alligators, caymans and gavils are commonly referred to as ‘cocodrillos’.
My guess is an alligator who is only slightly lost.
All that being said, a few thousand more of them in the Rio Grande wouldn’t hurt border security.
Reps: The Rio Grande should be stocked with crocodiles. Big ones.
Crocodiles are unreliable. I was thinking piranha.
Or candiru. Now there’s a fish you don’t want to mess with.
I think a better response would be open immigration through legal crossings accompanied by aggressive patrolling of the border for those who are trying to avoid background checks at the border. Nothing is ever going to stop Mexicans from crossing our border in order to work. The economic incentive is too great. If we did ever succeed in forcing out all the illegal aliens and stopping them from returning, we would immediately have to create a legal way for them to re-enter in order to replace the cheap labor we would have lost.
Angie, the candiru is easily defeated with a three-ply layer of condoms.
Multiple layers of defense. Crocs, Rattlesnakes, Gila Monsters, Jaguars, Puma, …
Don’t blame the crocodile, they are just doing the jobs alligators are too lazy to do.
How do you put them on him?
How in the world did we ever survive before they came here by the millions?
Back in the old days, we used to have babies.
We imported Irishmen.
Seriously, you might as well ask how we ever survived before we had to rely on imported oil. As our economy grows, it needs more fuel and more labor. That’s a good thing, not a bad one. With more labor comes more customers who continue to fuel the growth of the economy. We have room for lots more people, and there’s no reason to keep out the ones who want to work.
More fundamentally, our government has no moral right to prevent us from hiring people outside the country to work for us. In what way does it impinge on your rights for a farmer to hire Mexican workers to pick his tomatoes? So long as the workers are not criminals or enemy agents, we have the right to do business with them.
Help is on the way.
The New York Times, October 10, 2006, Gone for Decades, Jaguars Steal Back to the Southwest By Sandra Blakeslee.