2024-08-07 21:27:43
It turned out that it was not Victor’s circus performer, but his mother’s
Kroki, the Nile crocodile, changed his cage in the outskirts of Sofia’s Botunets neighborhood with his own cage in the Sofia Zoo. This became possible after almost 2 days the law enforcement authorities, municipal officials and the mayor of the “Kremikovtsi” district tried to confiscate the crocodile. And its owner, Viktor Mihailov, wouldn’t give it to him because he needed it for circus performances.
“I have no words. What happened yesterday is an outrage and is an absolute abdication of the state’s responsibility for people’s lives and health. I only told them that if someone guaranteed me that the animal would be here in the morning and there would be no man eaten, they could leave. The people who raise the animal were the ones who guaranteed, said they would keep it safe, and made some kind of fence anyway. Yesterday
there was no fence, the animal could go outside”.
pointed out the mayor of “Kremikovtsi”, Lilia Donkova, after the second unsuccessful attempt to deport Kroki late on Tuesday evening.
In fact, it turned out conclusively that Kroki did not belong to Mihailov, who kept him tied behind a wire fence next to an apartment block, but to his mother. And the reptile was so tame and harmless that the owner let his children play with it.
His regular documents turned out to be a problem for Croci to be taken to the zoo.
“There are documents, they are not in his name, but in someone else’s. There are rumours, the gentleman’s wife told some information that has not been confirmed and I cannot comment, but they are certainly not in his name and he is not the owner of the animal”, said Lilia Donkova.
Croci, which RIOSV experts identified as a Nile crocodile, has been bred for about two months in Botunets. The reptile lives in a small hole of water, always tied up.
“It’s not a wild animal, it’s domesticated. I’d be scared of a wild crocodile too.
I feed it, the children play with it.”
the owner Mihailov was telling his point of view.
After a check by RIOSV – Sofia, it turned out that the reptile is registered and has all the necessary documents, as well as that the species is allowed to be bred according to the law.
“Because I am an organizer of circus performances. I have parrots, I have snakes, I have a crocodile that I amuse the children with. I have a permit for these animals, I can’t afford to look at them like that”, Mihailov also justified himself. Croci was even chipped.
“The doctor who is a specialist on this topic said that the animal was not raised in good conditions and was not developed properly. It should grow to 6 meters long, it is a Nile crocodile, but in fact it will grow to 3.5 meters because it was not bred according to the normal rules. The animal is not to blame, the people are to blame”, however, explained the mayor of “Kremikovtsi” Lilia Donkova.
Croki is currently only 1.6 meters tall, even though he is about 2 years old.
However, the crocodile from “Botunets” is not the only one that is privately bred in Sofia. According to information of “24 Chasa” on the territory of RIOSV – Sofia, for the period 2004-2024, there were 23 registered Nile crocodiles.
There are no specified requirements for private breeding of a Nile crocodile –
but the animal must feel good. Croci’s pool of water, however, measured 1.2 by 1.2 meters, which is just over 2 square meters.
There are clearly stated requirements for keeping such a reptile in a zoo – 12 square meters of land and 20 square meters of water area.
In fact, the only requirement for keeping a crocodile at home is that the temperature in the terrarium be maintained in the range of 25 degrees to 35-40 degrees. The reptile is not allowed to walk freely.
It was the drop in temperatures during the winter in Bulgaria that was the only concern for Croci’s life, the experts said. And the pit dug on municipal land could otherwise do the job for a while.