Crocodile seen in Cainta floodwaters
abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak | 09/29/2009 7:49 PM


It’s not an urban legend.

While most parts of Metro Manila and its environs remained submerged in floodwaters sometime after midnight on Monday, September 28, three people got the scare of their lives when they saw a crocodile floating in the flood.

Abs-cbnNEWS.com learned of the incident when 26-year old Michael Lambert, one of the three witnesses, posted a photograph of the animal on his Facebook account. Lambert happened to be the Facebook friend of a friend of a staff member at abs-cbnNEWS.com.

The other two witnesses are Kenneth Taneo (25 years old) and Marie Tan (25).

“I had to back-up and take this from a higher point. A few seconds earlier, this was right in front of us!” Lambert said in his Facebook post. “I adjusted the exposure and brightness of this photo.”

Seen in Cainta

Taneo told abs-cbnNEWS.com that the incident happened at the corner of Dollar and Schilling streets at the Cainta Greenpark Village.

The town of Cainta was among the areas most affected by the flood brought on by tropical depression Ondoy when it visited the Philippines over the weekend.

Lambert explained that he and his companions were on their way to visit a friend who got stranded in her house at the Cainta Greenpark Village when the incident happened. “We brought her food because she has not yet eaten.”

About a block away from his friend’s house, Lambert and friend saw an object that “looked (either) like a tire or a crocodile floating in the floodwaters.” The water at that time, he said was about thigh deep.

“It was pitch black. There was no electricity or whatever,” he recalled. “But we had a flash light. We trained our flashlight on the thing and saw that it was a crocodile.”

Scared by the close encounter, Lambert said they stepped back slowly by a few feet and avoided making sudden movements. “We didn’t panic because we didn’t want to alarm it.”

“We climbed up a mound of soil. We wanted to get out of the water first. And that was when I took the picture.” That, he explained was why the photo was a bit blurred already.

Luckily for Lambert and his companions, the crocodile just kept floating, apparently not noticing their presence.

He said they waited for the crocodile to swim away before they stepped back into the water and continued walking.

Forest park escapee?


“Apparently, a lot of these creatures had escaped from the Pasig Rainforest Park during the typhoon. And one of them made it into the flooded streets of this private village in Cainta,” Lambert said in his Facebook post.

But Pasig city Mayor Robert Eusebio denied earlier that any of the crocodiles from the forest park escaped.

An Inquirer.net report quoted the Pasig city Mayor saying, “Nothing to worry. The crocodiles are still in their cages as reported by the zoo keeper.”

Lambert later conceded that the animal may have come from anywhere. “We do not know where it came from. Might have come from the zoo or swamps around the area.”

Lambert’s encounter with the crocodile is not the only one involving wildlife that victims reported in the aftermath of the disaster wrought by typhoon Ondoy.

At the height of the floods, Metro residents also reported of snakes suddenly appearing in their houses. – Gemma Bagayaua Mendoza, abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak with Mark Telan, abs-cbnNEWS.com

mas kuyaw ang mga crocodiles sa congresso

I don't like crocodile either  ang naa sa political arena or
  the real crocky, I'm scared of snakes the real crawling ones
  pero mas labi na tong upright two-legged snake nga and dila
  naay suwab nag lit-ad lit-ad ug dunggab sa bukobuko sa
  laing tawo. 

daghang salamat hb...anyways ang mga crocs sa congresso ay walay pagkabusog....kawat to the max.....and thats a fact......hehehehehe