The parents of a seven-year-old Australian boy may be sued after the child scaled a security fence at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre on Wednesday and killed 13 animals over a half-hour. The boy bashed several of them with a rock, including a 20-year-old goanna monitor lizard, before feeding them—as well as some live ones—to Terry, the saltwater crocodile. At one point, the child even crossed one of the two fences between him and Terry. Sadly (for Terry), he never made the final leap over.
Zoo officials believe the child’s small height kept him from setting off the sensor alarm system, but cannot press charges against the child (in the Northern Territory of Australia, you must be at least 10 to be found libable for a crime). “We’re horrified that anyone can do this, and saddened by the age of the child,” said the zoo director. “By all accounts he’s quite a nasty seven-year-old.”
While most children probably wouldn’t scale a security fence to make it happen (and those who would usually have parents watching them), it’s not altogether shocking that a 7-year-old boy would get off on watching a croc nosh on some lizards. It’s called the food chain, people! That kid wasn’t necessarily inhuman—he may have been nothing but a curious, amateur scientist with a rock that goes smoosh.
[Photo: Getty Images]
