Fidel Castro's Crocodiles Are Very Much With The Shits

(Miami Herald) – In Sweden, crayfish parties are held in August to commemorate the end of summer. Among the delectables and drinks, a bizarre incident occurred at the Skansen Aquarium in Stockholm: a crocodile once owned by Fidel Castro attacked a guest.

The 75-year-old man was giving a speech while standing atop a stone adjacent to the tank where the two Cuban crocodiles ⁠—a rare species of the reptiles— reside. Then, he laid his arm on the enclosure’s glass barrier.

Taking advantage of the proximity of the man’s limb, the opportunistic predator jumped up the wall, which measured approximately 6 feet high, and bit it, holding onto the arm for about 10 seconds.

According to CNN, the man suffered wounds in the lower arm and hand, and was hospitalized.

Hope the guy who stuck his arm in a crocodile tank is ok in the long run, but to be honest I don’t really care all that much about that part of the story. “Crocodile does thing crocodiles do” doesn’t really get me out of bed let alone on the keyboard. No, the fascinating part of this story is buried deep in this article via the Miami Herald.

The reptiles came from Cuba. In fact, the owner of the pair was none other than Fidel Castro, who apparently had developed the habit of gifting crocodiles — both embalmed and alive— to his allies.

Castro and Hillary, as the Skansen Aquarium crocodiles are known, were a gift from the late Cuban president to Vladimir Shatalov, the famous Russian cosmonaut, to symbolize the friendship between the two Communist nations in 1978, according to the Independent, a British online newspaper.

Apparently, the reptiles’ presence caused a stir in Shatalov’s home.

“Shatalov took them to Moscow and had them in his apartment until his wife said: ‘No more!’ And then he had to give them to a zoo in Moscow,” Wahlström told AP.

Wahlström brought them to Sweden in 1981, transporting them as carry-on luggage.

Easily one of the best parts of being a dictator has to be the fact that you can give anything you want as a gift and people just have to accept it. Giving someone an alive or embalmed crocodile as a gift is as bad of a gift as I’ve ever heard. But there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to accept at least one potentially alive crocodile and then you’re stuck with it for the entirety of your life. Because there’s also no doubt in my mind he’s the type of guy to check up on said crocodiles. What if Castro comes over for dinner and the crocs aren’t around to great him upon his arrival? That’s a paddling. This guy Shatalov had multiple crocodiles living in his Russian apartment in the off chance Fidel decided to strut around Russia for a weekend getaway. That’s power few have ever wielded.

And while I find that scenario to be utterly preposterous and completely, uniquely hilarious it might not even be the best part. Wahlström bud, I don’t know how they do things over in Sweden, but where I’m from you cannot bring two alive crocodiles as your carry-on items. Maybe on Spirit but not on any of the other airlines I’m aware of. There’s gotta be a better way to transport these dinosaurs other than business class. There simply has to be.

PS – Gifting crocodiles is an incredible flex, but nothing tops Escobar’s cocaine hippos which still dominate the land in Colombia to this day.

PPS – David Letterman wasn’t exactly a dictator, but his gift-giving certainly falls in line with that type of thinking. When he retired he sent Jimmy Kimmel boxes of ties and Conan O’Brien a horse. A whole horse.