With their country often an arena for more powerful neighbours to play out their politics, often violently, the people of Lebanon are used to being up to their necks in alligators. A crocodile, however, has succeeded in enthralling them.

Workers spotted the 1.5-metre reptile in the Beirut River two weeks ago, and since then police, military officers, environmentalists and other Beirutis by the hundreds, as well as tourists, have come to the waterway to catch a glimpse of it. Beirut's newspapers update their readers daily on efforts to trap the crocodile, and the television station MTV has broadcast live from a lookout above the river, its cameras scanning the waters below.

It is not a bucolic sight. [Link]