Sometime back, some uncredited genius invented what has become a staple food at state and county fairs all across America: the pork chop on a stick. The tasty fare is easy to handle and a lot less messy than holding a chop in your bare hand. (Many countries have similar food-on-a-stick taste treats.) Well, it isn't just Americans who can get creative. Crocodiles in Australia came very close to perfecting a new taste treat. Rancher on a stick.
SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian rancher described Tuesday how he spent a week up a tree in a remote crocodile-infested swamp as maneaters stalked him — after he fell off his horse.
The manager of the Silver Plains cattle station in the far northeast Cape York peninsular, David George, said he watched crocodiles' eyes glowing red beneath him for seven nights before he was rescued by helicopter.
"Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me," George told Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper.
"All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out.
"I'd yell out at them, 'I'm not falling out of this tree for you bastards'."
George, 53, said his nightmare began when he was thrown by his horse. Dazed and bleeding, he climbed back into the saddle and gave the animal its head, expecting it to take him home.
But later, in the pre-dawn darkness, he realised it had taken him more than a kilometre (about a mile) into the heart of a crocodile swamp.
The horse was obviously in on it and was making a delivery.
