The evidence was scary — two rubber Croc shoes and shorts floating in the water Tuesday inside the Nile Crocodile enclosure at St. Augustine’s Alligator Farm Zoological Park.

No victim was found among the scaly enclosure’s inhabitants, just a bloody trail to the top of a nearby 20-foot-tall structure.

Then came the calls to police that solved the mystery, and led to the arrest of a 23-year-old Green Cove Springs man charged with burglary and criminal mischief, according to the St. Augustine Police Department.

The first came at 6:50 a.m., a neighbor saying a suspicious person was crawling in a Holly Lane backyard across Anastasia Boulevard from the 125-year-old park, clad only in underwear, said police spokeswoman Cecilia Aiple. Then came a call from the Alligator Farm reporting some serious vandalism, she said.

“He ... took a jump into a pond infested with big crocodiles,” Aiple said. ”... When they made contact with him, he claimed he had been bitten by an alligator. And when the vandalism call came in, we put two and two together.”

The man, identified by police as Brandon Keith Hatfield, got into the park about 7:45 p.m. Monday and damaged part of its snack bar, then went into the recently opened “Oasis on the Nile” exhibit, Alligator Farm Director John Brueggen said.

“He jumped off a 5- to 6-foot structure into about 2 feet of water, then climbed up on the 20-foot structure later, which we know from the blood trail,” Brueggen said. “In our 125-year history, this is the first time anyone has tried to go swimming with the crocodiles.”

The arrest report said security cameras show a 9-foot-long crocodile lunging at the man, who escapes to the edge of the pool. But when he sits on the bank of the pool, the “crocodile locks onto his left foot.”

“In the video you can see the defendant trying to fight off the crocodile and he managed to get away,” the report said. It shows him climbing part of the facility’s zip line feature where they found “evidence of considerable bleeding.” A statue valued at $3,000 also was knocked over.

Brueggen said he and his staff are concerned about visitor safety and security, but “protection against the lunacy and erratic behavior of nighttime trespassers is nearly impossible,” he said.

“I have a hard time justifying in my mind what I see, this guy seemingly staggering down some of the boardwalks but nimble enough to go over a 10-foot tall fence with barbed wire,” he said. ”... He climbed out and leapt in again like he was having fun at somebody’s swim park.”

When Hatfield was questioned by police, he first said he had been attacked by an alligator, the report said. Then he said he ran into an old man who had one on a leash, and he ended up “surrounded by all these baby alligators.”

“He said the old man had a pool in his garage with all these alligators and the old man was feeding him to his alligators,” the report said.

Hatfield was taken to Flagler Hospital but tried to leave and was caught as he got into a retention pond surrounded with barbed wire, the report said. Placed under arrest, he was returned to the hospital for surgery to his foot and a possible broken ankle from jumping off a roof at the Alligator Farm, the report said.

The vandalism caused more than $5,100 in damage, the arrest report said.