The crocodiles looked bigger too. Every pond and every swamp of silty gloop seemed to have its own armoured thug. Although known as ‘muggers’, this didn’t do justice to their villainy. They were like tree trunks with a four-foot mantrap grin. In 1797, a vast, twenty-foot specimen was brought back to Colombo, slung between two carts. Percival describes how, when the beast was cut open, it was found to contain a local man in an advanced state of digestion. When I told Ravi about this, he winced. ‘They’re still big killers, especially amongst women, washing clothes.’
Dangerous beasts: crocodiles in Sri Lanka.
