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<\/p>\nA Northern Territory mum was taking her kids to school when she found herself jumping in to help remove a crocodile lurking in a puddle outside the local bottle shop.<\/p>\n
Long-time Humpty Doo resident Melody Wehipeihana was doing school drop-off on Tuesday when she noticed a crowd gathering by the side of the Arnhem Highway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Members of the small community on Darwin’s outskirts were peering into a large puddle that had pooled as a result of wet season rains.<\/p>\n
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The crocodile was spotted in a small pool of water outside the Humpty Doo pub. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Ms Wehipeihana had a heads up from a friend.<\/p>\n
“My friend rang and told me that there was a small crocodile at our local bottle shop, and I used to walk my dog past there like every week,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So I was a bit spun out that, you know, there was a crocodile just sitting in the puddle there.”<\/p>\n
Ms Wehipeihana said she had never seen a crocodile that close to shops and the highway, only further down the creek where a trap had been set up.<\/p>\n
Zane Trebilcock was mowing the lawn outside the shop when he saw the crocodile’s head pop out of the water.<\/p>\n
Huge crocodile pulled from creek near popular NT waterfall<\/a><\/p>\n Rangers in the Northern Territory caught an average of a crocodile per day in the first week of 2026, including one measuring 4.9 metres.<\/p>\n “It gave me a little bit of a startle,” he told ABC Radio Darwin on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n “That was the first time I’ve ever spotted a crocodile in there.”<\/p>\n Mr Trebilcock said the puddle was only about 4 metres long and 60 centimetres wide, but it was big enough for the 1.5-metre freshwater crocodile.<\/p>\n He contacted NT Parks and Wildlife, suspecting the reptile had wandered up from one of the nearby creeks, but a local Humpty Doo man sprang into action before the rangers could arrive.<\/p>\n By then, the Wehipeihana family had pulled over to join the crowd, taking photos as the crocodile was pulled from the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We just knew we had to get it away from the road and relocate it,” Ms Wehipeihana said.<\/p>\n “Dylan put a rope around its neck to pull it out because we didn’t want it to get hurt.”<\/p>\n He then asked if anyone could help secure the reptile and, when nobody else volunteered, Ms Wehipeihana stepped in.<\/p>\n The bottle shop where the crocodile was spotted is located between a service station and the Humpty Doo Hotel. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)<\/p>\n She said she gripped the crocodile, applying pressure to the back of its head to limit mobility, while her co-rescuer tied rope around the animal’s jaw.<\/p>\n “I was just hoping I was holding on to it tight enough so it didn’t turn around and bite my hand,” Ms Wehipeihana recalled.<\/p>\n The reptile was bundled into a trailer and moved to another creek “a bit further away from suburbia” and the busy highway.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/e67da91c86d243e502afa928ebb9f182.jpeg\")
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