Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1880 — A Travelling Crocodile. [ARTICLE]

A Travelling Crocodile.

Some six weeks ago a lively young crocodile contrived one night to effect its escape from Josephs Choikowa’s travel ling menagerie, then exhibiting at Kuachwarda, and all the efforts made to discover its hiding-place in the neighboring brooks and ponds proving fruitless, the proprietress, after three days search, gave it up as irretrievably lost, and departed on her further professional rounds. A month later the smith of Sa’nau, a village not far- from Kuschwarda, was strolling home toward evening through the rain, when he suddenly espied, lying in a huge puddle on the high road, what hefat first took to be a drunken man, prostrate and helpless. Upon wading into the mud, with the chantable intention of extricating the recumbent one from so miry a bed, he perceived to his astonishment that the object of his solicitude was the missing crocodile. Nothing daunted, he fastened a rope round the saurian's scaly body behind its shoulders, and led it along until he met a cartjnto which the assistance of the driver, he managed to lift it. The crocodile made no resistance, but followed its captor as meekly as though it had been a tame dog, tied to a string. On subsequent exammation it was found to have increased in size and weight during its spell of liberty, and to be, for a crocodile, in excellent health and spirits. What it had fed upon while roaming about the country, and how it had kept out the cold during the chilly nights of May and June, are still mys tones to its owner, who has joyftilly recovered possession of her truant.— London. Telegraph.