"Crocodile Dundee" needed in France

Hunting is still a pretty popular pastime in France, at least in rural parts of the country.

There's even a political party, Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions (Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition, CPNT) which fielded candidates in the recent European parliamentary elections and whose leader, Frédéric Nihous, stood in the presidential election back in 2007, winning over 400,000 votes nationwide.

Deer, foxes, boars, rabbits, hares and birds are all fair game for what many still consider to be a "sport".

But this week in the village of Xertigny in the eastern department of Vosges, the hunt has been on for quite a different kind of creature - a crocodile.

It was apparently first spotted by an 82-year old man last weekend, but not wanting to be thought to be a little doolally by the rest of the folk in the area he reportedly kept quiet about what he thought he had seen.

Since then though, several other people stepped forward to say they too had seen it and the local authorities began to take the sightings seriously.

A plan has been put in place to try to capture the beast with a trap being set up in a large pond on the outskirts of the village.

The services of the fire brigade, police and officials from l'Office de la chasse et de la faune sauvage were also called upon, and according to reports in the local press they were within two metres of the animal on Wednesday morning as it lay on the banks of the pond.

But then it did what crocodiles supposedly do best, slipped into the water and disappeared out of sight.

So the beast, measuring around 1.5 metres in length is still on the loose

And local officials are now thinking about calling in a specialist team from the nearby city of Metz to try to help them out in their attempts to catch the reptile alive and have it transported to a crocodile farm almost 400 kilometres away in Pierrelatte in southeastern France or have it killed.

At this point you might be wondering how the crocodile came to be on the loose in the first place.

Well for the moment that remains a mystery, although a local farmer is reported to have seen a van around two weeks ago on the banks of the pond where the croc "could have been thrown into the water".