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<\/div>\nBy Abdul Rahman Muchtar<\/p>\n
Palu, Indonesia – An elusive Indonesian crocodile, which has swum around with a motorcycle tyre stuck around its neck for six years, has finally been freed by an animal lover on the island of Sulawesi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The roughly four-metre crocodile had generated sympathy among some residents in the city of Palu who feared the tyre might eventually choke the reptile as it grew in size.<\/p>\n
But it had proved very difficult to capture. At one point,an Australian crocodile wrangler attempted to free the reptile but was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
“I caught the crocodile by myself. I was asking for help from people here but they were scared,” said local resident Tili, 35, who like many Indonesians uses one name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He set up a basic trap with a rope tied to a log and using live chickens and ducks as bait.<\/p>\n
\u200b<\/p>\n
But after tracking the reptile for three weeks, the wily crocodile managed to escape his trap on two occasions before finally being captured.<\/p>\n
“Many people were sceptical about me and thought I was not serious” about capturing the crocodile, said Tili, beaming as he posed for pictures in front of the tethered reptile after using a saw to remove the tyre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In 2020, authorities in the province had offered an unspecified reward for anyone who could remove the tyre, though for Tili it did not appear this was his main motivation.<\/p>\n
“I just can’t stand to see animals hurt. Even snakes, I will help,” said Tili, whose wildlife expertise is self-taught.<\/p>\n
The reptile, which local people had referred to as “buayakalung ban” (crocodile with a tyre necklace), was released back into the river on Monday evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Abdul Rahman Muchtar Palu, Indonesia – An elusive Indonesian crocodile, which has swum around with a motorcycle tyre stuck around its neck for six years, has finally been freed by an animal lover on the island of Sulawesi. The roughly four-metre crocodile had generated sympathy among some residents in the city of Palu who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":981263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}