Friday, 03 Oct, 2008 Offbeat

A 7 year-old Australian boy broke into a local zoo and fed a number of animals to a crocodile and killed several lizards for fun.

The violent act, caught on zoo camera, showed how the boy fed several live animals to the 11-foot, 440-pound crocodile. There were a turtle, four blue tongue lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and a 1.8 metre goanna among the animals. The director of the zoo said that some of them are hard to replace.

The boy also beat several lizards to death with a rock and threw them to the crocodile. Rex Neindorf, the zoo's director, said that the camera footage at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre showed the smiling face of the boy, while he killing the animals and feeding them to crocodile named Terry.

''By all accounts, he's quite a nasty 7-year-old and he comes from a family that's got a history of violence, and he's continued on with it and nothing can be done because he's seven,''he said.

Police found the boy, who lived nearby, but could not do anything because children under 10 years old cannot be accountable in the Northern Territory.

Neindorf is going to sue the parents of the boy to make them accept the responsibility for his behavior.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald