Once, when the Croc Bank staff wanted to get some monitors down from the trees, they just took a long stick and pushed them over from the height of almost a two storey building. They fell on the ground but suffered no damage and just continued running around. I recall the day Gerry challenged Nikhil "the bodybuilder" to pull a monitor lizard that was half out of a burrow. At first he thought the monitor's tail would break but though he tugged with all his might his rippling muscles couldn't move an inch of the monitor.
In the mornings, I helped the workers clean the croc pits, a task which I thoroughly enjoyed. We would jump into the pits with big sticks and chase all the crocs into the water. Then we would clean out the croc shit and the left overs of their food which included a lot of bones. This exercise was usually done with a male worker first chasing the crocs into the water. Then the remaining 3 to 4 women would help with brooms, baskets and spades. Occasionally, we would have a crocodile wanting us to get out of his pit instead. No matter how hard you hit him on his nose he would chase you around until he would finally give in, so to speak, and dash into the water with a big splash or sometimes, glide gracefully to where he could join his friends who sometimes numbered a thousand! (The Croc Bank had around seven thousand crocs at the time I was there.)
I also had occasion to participate a few times in the operations involved in shifting crocodiles from one location to another. That was quite an adventure in itself!
One day Rom and Harry decided to shift the largest male Gharial in the Croc Bank from one pit to another as it had broken its upper jaw in a fight with another male during the previous breeding season.
Normally you try to catch a croc by throwing a sort of a small anchor in and when the croc latches on to it you try and pull it out. Once it is out, about 10-15 people quickly jump and sit on it. (That's the only way to prevent a croc from getting back into water!). With its mouth bound by rubber bands, the croc is then rolled onto a ladder, bound to it, lifted and carried to the pit that it has to be transferred to. An average adult croc is about 250 kg and about two to three metres long. It takes 15-20 people to carry it.