Rumors about Crocs and Alligators have been doing the rounds in New York for as long as anyone can remember, the problem with New York is that its actually quite cold in the winter so any man eating reptile would have to find a nice warm place to spend the winter. Shanghai is a little different however, it gets cold in winter but not overly so, throw in the fact that exotic wild animals can be bought relatively easily either for dinner or for amusement and you have a potentially dangerous situation.

Shanghai Daily has an interesting story on the third crocodile caught in Shanghai’s creeks and rivers this year:

WILD animal protection authorities said they caught a 1.5-meter-long crocodile in a creek in a suburban residential area after terrified residents saw it swimming near the creek bank yesterday afternoon.

It is the third crocodile that officials said they have caught in the Pudong New Area this year.

The crocodile was seen by residents swimming in a creek near a supermarket on Changqing Road in Pudong at about 2pm yesterday. The unusual scene attracted a group of residents to a nearby bridge to watch, witnesses said.

“I was going home after shopping at that supermarket when I suddenly saw it under the bridge,” said a witness surnamed Wang. “At first I thought it was just a big black fish but when its head floated onto the water’s surface, – I realized that it was a crocodile!”

An official surnamed Tang with the Pudong Wild Animal Protection Station told Shanghai Daily at first they tried to use a tool to clamp down on the crocodile’s head. But the crocodile went below the surface, Tang said.

They then used a big fishing net to catch it about 4pm.

Local police were still investigating where it came from.

On May 12, a crocodile was seen in a suburban creek in Pudong’s Kangqiao Area. Police said they had to kill it after failing to catch it. On January 15, a dead 2.1-meter-long crocodile was found in a creek in Pudong’s Yangyuan Area. Wild animal experts said it might have escaped from a restaurant.