Farmers can think fast.

A hoaxer recently reported the sighting of a crocodile in the English Channel off the coast of Boulogne, and the French authorities cleared the beaches.

Very wise too. These 'salties' as they call them in Northern Australia, can thresh out of the water in seconds, grab you by the leg and there may just be time for one short scream before you're dragged into the depths and held there until you drown. If you're really lucky your friends will find an arm some weeks later.

With global warming and changing currents who knows where they'll get to. Before you know it English farmers will start breeding them for shoes and handbags, as they did with ostriches a few years ago.

If you've ever seen the terrible feeding frenzy in a crocodile-farm pond when twenty crocs come tearing in for their daily buckets of dead chickens to be thrown in to them, you'll have no difficulty in thinking 'Jurassic Park'. Compared with that, 'Jaws' is just a film about a sweet little pet goldfish.

Its not all doom and gloom though. An old farmer friend of mine in South Africa has a small lake on his farm, and he was going to his orchard with a large bucket to pick some avocadoes one day when he heard splashing and girlish squeals of delight coming from the direction of his lake. As he peered through the trees he was surprised and delighted to see 3 lovely young women frolicking in the water. They'd been hiking across his land and as it was a hot day they'd paused for a little skinny-dipping. To his disappointment they spotted him almost immediately and quickly moved into the deep water, and one of them shouted, 'We're not coming out until you go away'.

'Oh, don't mind me, girls' he said, 'I've just come down to feed my crocodiles'