Exactly how..ahem…intelligence challenged..can people be? How imprinted can they be by images they’ve grown up seeing on TV or in the movies so that the image trumps potential cruel realities? And how can some drinks REALLY alter one’s perceptions of reality? And do you need further proof that not all dummies are made out of wood?
For some clues to the answers I introduce you to someone the Australian press is already nicknaming Crocodile Dumb-Dee:
An Australian man dubbed “Crocodile Dumb-dee” for trying to ride a huge crocodile after a drinking spree described Wednesday how he just wanted to play with the animal.
Michal Newman, 36, said he climbed into the enclosure of “Fatso”, a five-metre (yard) saltwater croc who lives at a northern wildlife park, to pat him and sit on his back.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, I will jump the fence and go from behind its tail and pat it and sit on its back’,” Newman told public broadcaster ABC.
“And within like one split second before I even slightly touched its back, it already had me by the leg,” he said.
Media reports said Newman tried to drip beer into the mouths of two female crocodiles before moving onto the giant Fatso.
He said he shouted at Fatso to let him go before escaping from the pen and returning to a nearby pub with severe leg injuries, where he drank a beer while waiting for an ambulance.
Attention to local zoos: keep this guy away from the lion’s cage.
And if one day he’s missing and you hear a lion burping or see it reaching for an Alka Seltzer, you’ll know what happened..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.