{"id":222244,"date":"2025-10-18T12:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222244\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T12:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:53:07","slug":"police-in-derbyshire-solve-mystery-of-crocodile-found-in-canal-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222244\/","title":{"rendered":"Police in Derbyshire solve mystery of crocodile found in canal | UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police hunting for a crocodile in Derbyshire have said the search turned out to be &#8220;more fluff than fear&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Derbyshire Police&#8217;s rural crime team posted &#8220;the strangest appeal ever to grace our Facebook page&#8221; on Thursday, after a member of the public spotted a crocodile dumped in a canal in Willington.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to go out on a limb and guess this little guy isn&#8217;t native to Derbyshire and as such, if you can offer any information about the crocodile&#8217;s whereabouts now, or have knowledge of how it ended up at that site, please drop us a direct message,&#8221; said the appeal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For clarification, although we cannot claim to be medical professionals, we are acutely aware the crocodile is deceased,&#8221; it added, after a number of commenters pointed out the animal looked dead.<\/p>\n<p>The appeal was widely shared and the team soon had an answer.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/download-app\" target=\"blank\" data-tracking-label=\"ui-app-promo-download-link\" class=\"ui-app-promo sdc-article-widget\" data-type=\"\" data-component-name=\"ui-app-promo\" data-testid=\"app-promo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We can now confirm the mystery has been solved!&#8221; wrote the rural crime team on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A member of [the] public has come forward and explained that the crocodile was a stuffed taxidermy one, filled with hay, and inadvertently caught while fishing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While it gave us all a bit of a surprise, it turns out this one was more fluff than fear!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read more from Sky News:<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/victory-for-virginia-says-family-of-prince-andrews-accuser-as-royal-gives-up-all-his-titles-13451850\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">&#8216;Victory for Virginia&#8217;, says family &#8211; as Andrew gives up titles<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/prince-andrew-gives-up-all-his-titles-everything-we-know-13452017\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Everything we know about Prince Andrew&#8217;s title decision<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/donald-trump-admits-its-possible-hes-being-played-by-vladimir-putin-over-ukraine-13452050\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Trump admits it&#8217;s possible he&#8217;s being &#8216;played&#8217; by Putin<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The escapade seems to have entertained the crime team&#8217;s Facebook followers, with one commenting: &#8220;Brilliant! Really made me smile once it was revealed what it was!<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can imagine it gave you all a bit of a shock.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police hunting for a crocodile in Derbyshire have said the search turned out to be &#8220;more fluff than&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-222244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}