Germany Besieged by Alligators, Crocodiles and Neo-Nazis Today

“More than likely if you encounter a gator and it is your first time seeing one you are going to panic. You may feel threatened, and you may want to run or paddle wildly.” So writes kayaking expert Victoria Adams in a recent post about kayaking in alligator territory at Inflatable Kayak Blog, which someone should translate into German. Really, it should be translated in as many languages as possible. It’s very enjoyable: “What do you do if you encounter an Alligator on your trip? 1) Do not panic! Just leave them alone! And Don’t Feed Them!…” (It is always, always funny to end the sentence “Do not panic” with an exclamation mark.) But the reason why it’d be good if someone translated it into German is that there have been numerous reports of alligators and crocodiles running (paddling?) wild in Germany lately.

Sunday afternoon, outside the northwestern city of Bochum, a group of kids swimming in the Ruhr called the cops to say they’d been chased out of the water by a six-foot-long crocodile-one of two they saw in the popular bathing area. The cops believed them. As police spokesman Volker Schütte said:

“We can often tell when kids are just playing around and lying to us. They usually break down under close questioning. But when we took them aside individually and asked them if they were having a laugh, they insisted they’d really seen it.”

Also, in May, a local newspaper writer had reported seeing a crocodile in a nearby lake. (Could be global warming driving the reptiles North.)

Two days earlier, in a small village 100 miles to the south called Gross-Rohrheim, an alligator had been spotted walking in front of a motorcycle shop at two o’clock in the morning. Police used dog-catching equipment to take the three-foot-three-inch creature into custody (it was no doubt very drunk) and later returned it to the local circus from where it had escaped.

Meanwhile, as the German soccer team’s success in the World Cup is making most of the country very proud, you can count on the neo-Nazis to be a bunch of dicks. For obvious reasons, some people are upset that the thus-far dominant squad that will play Spain in the semifinals today is not Aryan enough. An editorial on the far-right Deutscher Standpunkt website this week had this to say:

“The squad is not a German national team and those people with dark complexions are the Federal Republic of Germany, but they are not Germany. Not tall and blond, but black, brown, puny and Muslim. What progress! In fact one cannot become German, one is German-or not. These new Federal Republic citizens are and will remain foreigners.”

If you’re kayaking in Germany and you encounter neo-Nazis, please Do Feed Them…. to the alligators and crocodiles.