Never Smile at a Crocodile

Or stretch your arm out over its enclosure to take a cell phone picture apparently.

A young woman in Ukraine tried to take a picture of the crocodiles in her local zoo when she accidentally dropped her cell phone into the reptile's pond.  The animals of course swallowed the fool thing, and now doctors are considering how to get it out of the alligator's digestive tract.

This is a good lesson for why you should always back up your data and have a lock on your cell phone.  You never know when it's going to be eaten by a predator, and who knows how many minutes are being eaten up in this situation.

Apparently, the phone is still in working condition, since doctors can still hear it ring occasionally.  Part of me wants to know what brand of phone it was that it can take a dunking in water, being swallowed by a bloody great crocodile, and survive in its stomach for a couple of weeks.  My kids can destroy a cell phone with a wet towel.

Hopefully the phone will work its way out and the vets won't have to take the extraordinary step of doing surgery on a large, carnivorous reptile to get it out.  On the other hand, how many vets can say they've done thoracic surgery on a crocodile?