Watch: Dental surgery on ‘Australia’s crankiest crocodile’ almost ends in disaster

Zookeeper injured as team of staff try to restrain 15.5ft-long animal Elvis in New South Wales

An attempt to perform dental surgery on a giant saltwater crocodile nearly ended in disaster after the reptile started thrashing wildly, causing a head injury to a zookeeper.
A team of keepers set out to subdue and inspect Elvis, dubbed “Australia’s crankiest crocodile”, at the Australian Reptile Park in New South Wales.
A vet gave the 15.5ft-long crocodile a muscle relaxant, enabling seven keepers to dive on the creature’s back to restrain him.
A heavy wooden chock, wrapped in rubber, was inserted between the crocodile’s jaws to allow vets to inspect an ingrowing tooth.
They were hoping to take an X-ray and operate on a dental infection.
But moments after the keepers jumped on Elvis’s back, the half-ton reptile lost its cool and started thrashing its head from left to right.
The 5kg chock flew out and hit operations manager Billy Collett in the head, leaving him with a nasty bruise.
“The whole thing was over in less than 15 seconds, but it felt like an eternity,” Mr Collett said.
“I have never felt anything like it and I have caught hundreds of big crocodiles. He just went absolutely berserk.
“Bang, all of a sudden, I get hit in the head. I didn’t even know what it was. I went starry-eyed. I can’t even describe how hard I was holding on to this crocodile because if I had let go, got flicked off the side, I would have put the whole team at risk,” he said.
“It was like being in a fight. At one stage, I had my head at the side of his head literally looking straight into an open mouth and I knew at that stage I had to get myself and the team out of there. We were in serious danger. Things went wild, really fast.”
He explained that the big “saltie” was given a muscle relaxant because the procedure is safer for the animal than giving it a more powerful sedative, although it makes such operations more dangerous for the keepers.
Mr Collett was left with a “pretty decent bump” on the head but said that the outcome could have been much worse.
Despite being shaken, the team of keepers made a second attempt to subdue Elvis, using an extra dose of muscle relaxant.
This time it was successful and vets were able to remove a tooth that had become infected.
Elvis has been at the Australian Reptile Park since 2007.
It was brought there after being captured in the Northern Territory, where it had become aggressive towards boats in Darwin Harbour.
Saltwater crocodiles were almost hunted to extinction in the tropical areas of northern Australia but were given protected status in the 1970s.
Since then, their numbers have bounced back in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.