"My wife and I looked at each other - we were having a bit of a laugh to be honest about what to do next."

He said it quickly dawned on them the animal was one of two juvenile freshwater crocodiles reported missing from a nearby wildlife park on March 3.

"It had been a bit of a running joke around the streets and with my friends that those crocs were going to be turning up in a few years being two metres or three metres long," Mr Hughes said.

"As we've all done, we've seen Steve Irwin and the Crocodile Hunter, we thought that we were well-versed in maybe coming up behind it and grabbing it as it wasn't really moving too quickly, so that's what we did."

The Hughes family notified the owners and kept the reptile in their bath until police arrived.