"Pocho and Chito": the story of friendship between a man and a crocodile. The unusual friendship between a crocodile and a man

Biological scientists are sure that friendship between a crocodile and a human is impossible. There are many cases where people tamed crocodiles and began to trust them. However, in the end, they paid for this gullibility and carelessness with their own lives, as the alligators ate them.

However, there is a unique case of a twenty-year friendship (some kind of mystical attachment) between a man and a crocodile, a friendship that was interrupted only due to the death of the alligator.

...It happened back in 1991, Costa Rican fisherman Gilberto Shedden, better known as Chito, found a dying crocodile on the river, which was shot by a local shepherd so that the predator would not carry his calves. Chito loaded the crocodile's lifeless body into a boat and took it home, fortunately he had a pond near his home. The fisherman literally nursed the crocodile like a child, feeding it chicken and fish, sometimes even chewing food so that the animal would at least swallow it. Naturally, he also used medications. More than six months passed before the crocodile, named Pocho, recovered.

After this, the Costa Rican took the animal to the river and released it into the wild. What a surprise the fisherman was when the crocodile returned to his pond. So he began to live in it. True, the fisherman tried several more times to release the alligator into the wild, but all these attempts were unsuccessful - the crocodile returned to its savior.

And then Chito himself became so attached to the crocodile that he could no longer live without him. Every day a man and a five-meter crocodile weighing half a ton swam together in the pond and played. A terrible and ferocious animal, as we imagine an alligator, never showed aggression towards Chito. On the first day of each new year, the fisherman even traditionally put his head into the crocodile's mouth, laughing that Pocho would not dare to eat him on such a day. He demonstrated this act more than once to tourists who came to see this miracle of miracles. It’s a pity that now no one will ever see this fantastic number...

The crocodile died of old age in 2011. According to experts, he was then about sixty years old. He was already barely alive, Chito recalls, I brought him food and tried to feed him by hand, but Pocho no longer ate anything, he only wanted one thing, for me to be with him - he only needed my affection...

We already wrote about the incredible, and today we’ll tell you about an equally dangerous friendship between a man and a crocodile!

Costa Rican fisherman Gilberto Shedden's best friend is Pocho the crocodile. Everyone in the village calls this fisherman Chito. How surprised everyone was when the seemingly inconspicuous Costa Rican suddenly began walking around the village with his own crocodile.

Pocho is an ordinary crocodile about 5 meters long, Pocho weighs about half a ton. He has been living with a fisherman for almost 20 years.

It so happened that one day Chito found a crocodile by the river. He was severely wounded and weighed only 60 kilograms. Chito decided to cure the crocodile and release it into the wild. He took care of the crocodile, put it to sleep next to it, and fed it delicacies - fish and chicken. Six months later, the crocodile recovered, and it was time to release him back into the Parismina River. Imagine the fisherman’s surprise when the crocodile, having found itself in its native element, instead of going to its relatives, went ashore again and followed the fisherman to the village, without retreating a single step.

Chito and Pochto are the same age, they are both about 50 years old. The fisherman's relatives were shocked when one day they saw Chito swimming in the river with a crocodile. After a while, friends got used to seeing Chito and his crocodile Pocho always together and even persuaded the fisherman to perform numbers in front of the audience. Curious people began to come from all over the country, wanting to see the fearless fisherman and his five-meter predatory friend. He had to learn English to attract even more tourists. By the way, if you already have a business, and knowledge of a foreign language is not enough to attract foreign business partners, then ENSPEAK will teach you to speak English even in your sleep. And after that, you can go to Chito and watch how he communicates with Pocho!

The game consists of Chito going into the water and calling his crocodile. Pocho eats directly from his owner's hands and plays with him. Spectators pay $5 for this amazing performance. The fisherman admits that he feels absolutely no fear when communicating with Pocho, because the crocodile is his best friend.

The American crocodile is considered less aggressive than the Australian one. But there have never been any cases of friendship between a crocodile and a human before.

Many people consider crocodiles to be cold-blooded predators who are guided only by instincts. But in this situation, all these ideas are far from the truth. Now you will see for yourself when you learn this story of a crocodile and a man. This will change your usual understanding of crocodiles and wildlife in general.

Fisherman Chito and crocodile Pocho

Like many other real or fictional stories of friendship between man and animal, this story begins with a rescue back in 1989.

A young and then unnamed crocodile was shot by an unknown shepherd, after which the reptile, on the verge of life and death, was discovered near his home in the city of Siquirres (Costa Rica) by an ordinary Costa Rican fisherman named Gilberto Shedon. He pulled him ashore and hid him in a barn, and initially the 34-year-old man’s intentions were not at all altruistic: he was going to remove the crocodile’s precious skin after it died from its wounds.

But the crocodile desperately fought for life, stubbornly refusing to go to another world. The fisherman felt pity for the poor creature, and he began to gradually nurse the crocodile, feed it chicken, hiding it from his family. The fisherman devoted so much time to the crocodile that his wife left him, considering such an attitude towards the reptile crazy. As soon as Pocho - that’s what the crocodile was called - returned to normal, Gilberto released him back into the river and returned home. In the morning he found Pocho sleeping peacefully on his veranda. The crocodile refused to return to the wild, returned after its new owner and remained to live with him forever.

“When Pocho is anxious about something, his eyes blink quickly, and when he is happy, he blinks less often. You can tell a lot from the eyes,” says Chito.

The cognitive abilities of a prehistoric reptile and an ideal murder weapon are generally considered, to put it mildly, low. Not to mention the emotional ones. But, after leaving the crocodile, Gilberto, nicknamed Chito, began to swim without any fear with the monstrous toothy creature in the local river. Moreover, someone else could approach the reptile at a more or less close distance only under the supervision of the owner, when he was between the stranger and his pet.

Today, it’s easy to see a trainer fearlessly sticking his head into a crocodile’s mouth in any tropical country. But in these cases, a tricky trick is played out in front of the audience: before the performance, the crocodiles are fed to their fullest, and the temperature in the enclosure is maintained at a low temperature, at which the reptile is in suspended animation and, in principle, is not capable of any active actions. At the joint performances of Chito and the five-meter predator, everything was different. This is the only case when a person managed to tame a crocodile and enter into some special, almost mystical, trusting relationship with it.

Chito and Pocho's amazing relationship allowed them to perform in natural conditions. Performances simply became a necessity for them. Firstly, they made it possible to feed such a voracious domestic animal as a crocodile, and secondly, it was under these conditions that the Costa Rican authorities allowed Gilberto to keep the predator and even provided the services of a veterinarian. But, of course, the friendship between man and animal went much deeper than the superficial and, perhaps, somewhat vulgar spectacle of their joint swims for spectators.

“We have been with him for more than twenty years. We, of course, had problems in the first two or three years after we met. But I’m sure that Pocho will never harm me,” says Chito.

For more than twenty years, Pocho lived with Gilberto's family - he found a new wife, who gave birth to his daughter. The resourceful fisherman performed with the crocodile in a local reserve for almost ten years to surprised tourists, and the legends of “Pocho and Chito” spread throughout the world.

The past tense in the article is not just a few years ago, Pocho died of natural causes at the age of 55. But the story of his friendship with a man nicknamed Chito is still alive. And these are not just nice words. Tourists, touched by this amazing story of a unique and one-of-a-kind relationship, still come specifically to Costa Rica, look for Gilberto's house in Parismina and spend hours listening to Chito's stories about an incredible friendship spanning two decades.

Shortly before Pocho's natural death, a documentary was made about him and his owner, which claimed that the crocodile's abnormal behavior was most likely caused by brain damage due to a wound in 1989.

Subscribe to Quibl on Viber and Telegram to keep abreast of the most interesting events.

The unusual friendship of a fisherman and naturalist from Costa Rica named Gilberto Shedden and his best friend the crocodile Pocho, more than 5 meters long and weighing up to half a ton.

Also known as "Chito" (Crocodile Man), he first encountered a crocodile on the banks of the Parismina River in Central America in 1991, while the animal lay suffering from a gunshot wound.

The wounded crocodile was taken to Sikirs with the help of Chito and his friend, where a fisherman cared for it for six months. He fed the crocodile chicken, fish and gave him some medicines to make the crocodile recover.

He went beyond simply grooming the crocodile, he even simulated chewing himself to entice the crocodile to eat.

Chito kissed and stroked the crocodile and even slept next to the animal, not at all afraid of it.

“There wasn't enough food. The crocodile needed my care to restore its strength to life,” Shedden said.

He also hid Pocho in a hidden location in a pond under trees in a nearby forest until Costa Rican authorities gave him official permission to care for the crocodile. The injured crocodile soon returned to his healthy state and Chito released him into a nearby river.

However, the next morning he was stunned to see a crocodile sleeping outside the door of his house. The crocodile came back to his savior.

It seems that Chito's tender loving care made the crocodile stay close to his savior. Eventually, Pocho became a member of Scheden's family, who lived with his second wife and daughter. His first wife left him while he was treating a crocodile and spending a lot of time with it.

In 1991, a large sharp-nosed crocodile more than five meters long lived on the banks of the Reventazon River in Costa Rica and liked to visit a nearby farm to eat birds and cows. In the end, during another visit to the farm, the crocodile caught the eye of the owner, who shot him in the head with a gun. The reptile, with its last strength, crawled to the river bank and remained there to die...

At this time, a local fisherman named Gilbert Shedden was walking along the shore. Seeing the helpless crocodile, Gilbert decided to take it home and cure it.

For six months, the fisherman fed Pocho (that's what Gilbert called the crocodile) fish and bandaged his wound. Eventually, the crocodile recovered, and then Gilbert decided to take it back to the river so that the animal could live free in its natural habitat. Having released Pocho, the fisherman returned home and fell asleep, but the next morning, when he opened the door, he found Pocho standing at the entrance.

At a family council, where Gilbert, his wife and daughter were present, it was decided to leave the crocodile at home, but to place it not in a room, but in a pond in the backyard.

Over time, the friendship between Pocho and Gilbert became so strong that the man began to swim with a huge crocodile in the pond. During all this time, Pocho never showed aggression towards his savior, although crocodiles are considered dangerous predators that cannot be tamed. The unusual friendship between man and crocodile aroused the interest of hundreds of people who came specially to watch Pocho and Gilbert spend time together.

Pocho died of old age in 2011, having lived a full and happy crocodile life. Now Gilbert Shedden has got himself a new crocodile, and he has already managed to make some progress in his friendship with the reptile.

To this day, many people wonder what caused the unusual friendship between the deadly sharp-nosed crocodile and the fisherman. Some say that the crocodile stopped being aggressive due to a head injury caused by a gunshot, while others believe that the reason for the friendship was the care and kindness that Gilbert showed towards Pocho. What do you think?

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.