What did you get up to in school today, kids?

Nothing much. Oh, apart from it was our turn to look after the crocodile. That was pretty good.

THE Northern Territory News launched a snappy new promotion this weekend, giving away a crocodile to a school in its area.
...
Staff from a reptile park in the territory capital, Darwin, will set up a crocodile enclosure at the winning school and train a lucky class in how to care for their new reptilian mascot.

Well, on the one hand a school pet that's likely to live as long as and possibly even longer than any of the pupils has got to be better than upsetting all the kids when the hamsters all drop dead again. Hear that, Lydd Primary School in Kent? You thought it'd toughen the kids up and teach them a useful life lesson to have them raise a lamb that they'd eventually vote on whether send off to be turned into chops. In the Territory they'll feed lambs to their school pet and their grandchildren will decide whether to send it off to be turned into luggage.

On the other hand it's a fucking crocodile. A whole new meaning could apply to the phrase, "I'm just taking class 3E to feed the school pet."

Crocodile, for Daily Mail picture editors

And just in case David Attenborough has been in your magic fishtank and explained a bit about Australian crocodiles and you're expecting this to be a smaller and relatively safe freshwater crocodile rather than a much larger and much more dangerous two-fucking-attacks-in-2011-already saltwater crocodile, you'd be wrong. The reptile park, Crocosaurus Cove, makes a thing of having the real monsters if their website is anything to go by.

Enter the world of the awesome Northern Territory Saltwater Crocodile, with some of the largest in captivity on display. Fish for crocs, ‘Swim with the Crocs’ in the separate pool along side the croc enclosure, or enter the “Cage of Death”.

Cage of Death? If they get one of those too that'd be one school that never has any discipline problems. If I don't find out who threw that then the whole class - and I do mean the whole class - will be in the Cage of Death after school.

Sadly, if you're thinking of moving to the NT, finding out which school wins the crocodile and enrolling your own children there purely to make sure they grow up tougher than anyone you know you'll almost certainly be too late. The lucky school only gets the crocodile for just one term, and that's a pity because I liked the idea of there being a school producing year after year of school leavers conditioned to utter a single phrase whenever the subject of educational animals comes up. Altogether now:

"That's not a school pet... THIS is a school pet."