A “pet” Crocodile.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1939, Page 4

A “pet” Crocodile.

Lutembi, said to have been once the “pet” crocodile of an Arab slave dealer who occasionally threw him a slave for a meal, was one of the friends made in British East Africa by SquadronLeader L. Jarman, who was there for four months on aerial survey work. Lutembi lives in Lake Victoria Nyanza, and at a place called Jinja the natives call him by beating on the water with a piece of wood, crying out his name, and he comes to get pieces of meat that are slung to him on a piece of rope. Squadron-Leader Jarman has photographs of the crocodile taken when he fed it. One, taken from a range of a metre and a half, shows his old and wrinkled head very near. SquadronLeader Jarman went so close because the crocodile had been painfully slow in coming out from the water. As soon as he turned to go back he proved himself to be fully agile and splashed back heavily. A week later he disproved Squadron-Leader Jarman’s belief that he was old and sluggish by snapping off: the leg of a native who went just as near. “If someone left you a million dollars, what would you do?” “Hire six good 'lawyers and try to get it.”