Australia is pretty much the Florida of the rest of the world.
They’ve got countless venomous and poisonous creatures, enormous herds of emus and kangaroos, pythons crawling on rooftops, spiders that catch and eat snakes, and seas swarming with sharks, but nothing compares to the mighty crocodile.
Crocs put our American alligators to shame, growing up to 20 feet long and weighing up to 3,300 pounds, both around double the measurements of typical alligators. They are also very territorial and hunt by ambushing prey, which can be anything from fish and frogs to sharks, yes, sharks.
Put simply, they are what most people assume alligators are, times at least two.
Which makes what one grandpa did in a hugely viral video from a few years back even more impressive.
The video was taken on Goat Island on the Adelaide River in Australia’s Northern Territory and the man of the hour is something of a local legend around those parts named “King Kai Hansen” who runs a lodge for tourists.
He’s actually a Denmark native but moved to remote Australia many years ago, which he spoke about in a Forbes piece back in 2014.
“I’ve been on the island for 14 years and lived in a rural area for 25 years before that. It was all good there, but then they put in a supermarket and traffic lights around the corner. I’m a country boy, I don’t want bloody traffic lights. That’s for city people.
In those days I still lived together with my darling wife, we sat around having drinks and she said, a couple of times, ‘I’ll buy an island and there will never be any traffic lights.’
The next day there was an advert in the paper with an island for sale, this one, the only freehold island in the whole Northern Territory.”
Well, buy an island he did and has since been “King of the Castle,” as Borat would say, and while I’m sure the stories of his adventures are long and impressive, I’d venture to say none of them are quite as cool as this one.
There’s not too much context about this exact incident, but it appears the crocodile notices a yappy little dog and decided to try and score a quick bite to eat. However, King Kai was having none of that, grabbed his trusty non-stick frying pan, and went to war for the pup.
He smacked the croc twice on the snout just feet from his vulnerable legs, which caused the creature to reconsider all of its life choices and scamper back into the water.
Possibly stupid, but undoubtedly brave, it goes to show how he got his nickname…
Tip of the cap to ol’ King Kai.
