Honey, Where's The Crocodile?

The above question was asked by someone I worked with years ago when, after a night of drinking, I went back to his place to look at his collection of reptiles.

I'm aware the the first couple of sentences of this blog are more than a little odd! I have, in the past, kept many species of reptiles and I'm still quite fascinated by them, but unfortunately my wife doesn't share my interest, So I'm now reptile-free.

The person who I went home with worked on the same building site with me, and we had a few drinks after work one evening (depends on your interpretation of 'a few') and we got talking about lizards. I told him about a friend of mine who had a 'Water Dragon'. I was fascinated by this beautiful creature. It was free to run around the house and would often scare the life out of guests by jumping off a ledge and landing on their laps. He said that he had a snake which was house-trained, to which I disagreed saying you can't house-train a snake! To prove me wrong he invited me home to prove his point.

The strange thing about the effect of alcohol is that the oddest of situations or conversations seem quite reasonable when you are under its effect. I remember walking into his house, which was kept very warm because of his collection of reptiles. His wife, a rather large imposing woman who looked more pissed than we were, got to her feet rather unsteadily and slurred the words, “Don't piss in the sink, I've got dish-cloths bleaching in there!” then staggered off upstairs. Things became even stranger when he walked around the house shouting, “here Hissy, here Hissy!” it turned out that his pet snake was called 'Hissy Fit'. But for whatever reason it never materialized, I just got the drunken, “Honest, I have a snake, honest”. He then shouted up stairs to his wife saying, “Wot yer dun with the worm?!” To which she replied, “Its in bed wi me!” He then turned to me and said "It's in bed with the wife, do you want to go up and have a look at it?” I declined. I think the drink was beginning to wear off and it was all beginning to look very strange .

He then turned to me and said, “I bet you 'ave never 'ad one of these?” beckoning me into a small room. I hesitated to follow him, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I followed him into a room which was full of glass tanks with various lizards and snakes slithering or crawling about in them. In the corner of the room was an area which seemed to have a shallow pool in it. He beckoned me to walk over and have a look in the pool, but it seemed to be empty. It was then that he walked to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Honey, where's the crocodile?” to his wife.

The drink was now definitely wearing off and the predicament I found myself in was becoming more and more strange when his wife replied, “Shit! I've left it in the bath!” He turned to me and asked if I wanted to go to the toilet with him to look at his crocodile? I declined, made my excuses and left. I remember giggling to myself all the way home at the predicament I had left.

The next day at work I noticed that he hadn't turned in, and thought he must have had the mother of all hangovers, as I too felt 'a little under the weather'. He never returned to the building site again while I was there. The nature of being a journeyman joiner means you only work on contracts for so long, before moving on to the next job. It was a shame, because I quite liked the company of this man who happened to be an electrician.

A few months later, while working on another building site, I met up with a man who had worked with the reptile man and I enquired where he was. He told me that the night I had gone out with him, he had gone to the bathroom to remove his crocodile from the bath. It was only a juvenile and only about three feet long, he said. Because he was so drunk, the croc managed to grab hold of him and bit off two of his fingers and part of his hand! I felt so bad about this, as I felt that I was in some way to blame, though I didn't tell him to go croc wrestling! He never worked on the sites again. He bought a small sweet shop. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a little child going into his sweet shop and see the man with half a hand. And then for him to tell you that a crocodile bit it off, just like Captain Hook!

The other evening while at a party a strange woman kept telling me boring stories about holidays both her and her equally dull husband went on, saying, “You wouldn't believe the strange things that happen to us!” 

I just smiled and agreed.