Finca Las Lomas was owned by the New Alchemy Institute (now the Green Center) and one of their missions was to create “ecologically-derived human support systems”, which included aquaculture. There were three small ponds to raise fish. Our job was to periodically catch some fish and measure and weigh them.
Near the end of my stay, we went to catch some fish for measurement (and eat some of them). We finished with the first pond and went to the second. When we pulled up the net, there were no fish, which was perplexing. So we took a second pass and were extra careful to drag the net so no fish would escape.
At the other end I reached into the water to make sure I kept the bottom of the net on the ground so nothing could slip away. As I pulled the net up something big was slashing around, right where my hand was. It was a crocodile.
I was thankful it didn’t bite my hand when I was reaching for the net to pull it out of the water.
We couldn’t just let it go, because it would probably go into the other two ponds and wipe out the fish populations. And if it decided to stay local, it would just keeping growing and getting more dangerous. We called on Pancho and Miguel who helped maintain the farm. They said that the nose is super sensitive and if you hit it hard, it will kill the croc. I was skeptical but it turns out to be true.
Sarah was an excellent cook so we all enjoyed crocodile tail marinated in lemon, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, salt and coriander and fried in olive oil and garlic. We also enjoyed crocodile and cassava soup.