Animal Diaries Archive

Agro By Name, Agro By Nature

13 August 2004

This bloke is awesome, weighing in at over 600kgs and measuring over 15ft. This is one impressive croc. Agro was captured from the wild back in 1988. He was removed from Cattle Creek in north Queensland to protect him from being shot dead by hunters. Agro is now very happy protecting his new territory, a freshwater billabong here at Australia Zoo. Not only is Agro protecting his waterhole, he is also extremely protective of his two lovely females. The love of his life is Cookie, a large female of 10ft who was caught in exactly the same area as Agro, so these two were probably a bit of an item in the wild. She has a beautiful nature, the quietest and gentlest of all our crocodiles. Agro and Cookie are a perfect couple; they get on like a house on fire.

Agro's second love is a very young, feisty little girl. Lucy is in her late teens and all she wants to do is impress Agro. Like all teenagers, all she does is cause trouble trying to show off to Agro. She picks fights with Cookie all day, she attacks the keepers every time we're doing any maintenance and is generally an all-round headache.

Maintaining Agro's waterhole is probably our most nerve-wrenching job. Mowing Agro's enclosure is like a sport – you don't stop sweating. The entire time you're working it's hot; the real reason is nerves. You know somewhere in that dark, dirty water Agro is lining you up. Agro hunts the lawn mower just like he would an animal in the wild. Not only are we waiting for Agro to try and kill us, we also have Lucy snapping at our heels. To date Agro, has beaten us on four occasions. That's right, we have had to replace four lawnmowers because Agro has successfully attacked and killed them. (The machine, not the person!)

Many people ask why Agro hates the lawn mowers so much. Well basically, it's a really annoying sound that he sees as a threat to his territory. Agro will do anything to drive the lawn mower out of his territory and protect his family from this threat.