Would You Like to Ride A Croc?

If you visit the village of Paga on your next trip to Ghana, you can do just that. According to ABC News Travel, via Strange Ark:

The people of Paga swim joyfully and wash clothes in the same village pond that 110 crocs use as their home — and their dining room.

No one seems to know how long the crocodiles have lived in the pond, or how they got to this land-locked area. But Yahaya Ahasan, the head crocodile keeper, told ABC News that no one from the village has ever been harmed by the crocs. That’s extraordinary, considering that crocodiles are notoriously nasty if you get in their way, or if you resemble food.

But Ahasan said the crocs don’t feel threatened by humans here. “We believe that they are the souls of relatives of this town,” he said. “They are sacred animals, so we don’t hate them, we don’t kill them, we don’t harm them.”

So young men fish knee-deep next to what may look like logs, even though these logs have very sharp teeth.

One secret to the coexistence may be that the crocs here are some of the best-fed animals on the planet. They have lots of frogs and fish to snap at or gobble up in the water.

And for 10 specially trained crocs, there is a steady diet of tasty live chickens. The chickens are paid for by tourists who come from around the world to sit on the crocs backs, pet them and wag their tails, which could well slice them in two if not attached to a creature so happily digesting a bountiful buffet of birds.

You go first. I’ll watch.