KIEV, Ukraine — Workers at a Ukrainian aquarium didn’t believe it when a visitor said a crocodile swallowed her phone. Then the reptile started ringing.
The accident in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk sounds a bit like “Peter Pan,” in which a crocodile happily went “tick-tock” after gulping down an alarm clock.
But Gena, the 14-year-old croc who swallowed the phone, has not been living a fairy tale: He hasn’t eaten or had a bowel movement in four weeks and appears depressed and in pain.
Gena noshed on the Nokia phone after Rimma Golovko dropped it in the water. She had stretched out her arm, trying to snap a photo of Gena opening his mouth, when the phone slipped.
“This should have been a very dramatic shot, but things didn’t work out,” she said.
Dnipropetrovsk chief veterinarian Oleksandr Shushlenko said the crocodile will be taken for an X-ray next week if he continues to refuse food. Surgically removing the phone would be a last resort, he said, because incisions and stitches usually take at least three weeks to heal in reptiles, and the procedure is dangerous for the animal and the vets.
