A huge female Nile crocodile from a zoo in St. Augustine, Florida, had to undergo surgery to remove a visitor’s slipper from her stomach that fell into her cabin when its owner zipped over it.
Anuket, 10.5 feet long and 341 pounds, is recovering from the intervention performed at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine at the Alligator Farm Zoological Park in the first city founded by Europeans in what is now the United States.
It happened in Florida.
If another shoe falls from the sky again, it will surely not take it to the jaws, since crocodiles are not the animals that trip twice on the same stone.
The reptile was seen with the shoe in its mouth in December. He swallowed it and regurgitated it several times until it lodged in his stomach, according to a statement from the Veterinary School that saved his life.
At the zoo they tried to get him to expel him naturally but were unsuccessful, so Anuket ended up in the Veterinary School hospital.
Veterinary Hospital resident Garrett Fraess tried to get the slipper out of his stomach through his esophagus by sticking an arm in his mouth, obviously after Anuket was well sedated.
She did not succeed, as her arm was not long enough for this kind of animal, so she had to be taken to the operating room.
We will tell you how it all ended.
There large animal surgeon Adam Biedrzycki tried to push the shoe into the esophagus through an incision and it didn’t help either.
Anuket ended up undergoing a stomach operation in which they finally removed his shoe, which, according to the photographs, was unusable.
The female Nile crocodile spent the night at the Veterinary College and the next day returned home to St. Augustine.