(urth) Short Story 4: The Dead Man

[Jerry Friedman]

>From: David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
>I can only add to this that the depth of research needed for this little OMG-I'm-the-ghost ghost story is remarkable. It's not entirely convincing, because of the little Orientalist "footnotes," but the sheer legwork to get us into the peasant's mind---banter of women, jungle species succession, the croc's chimney, if true (I can't confirm it)---is commendable. 
>
>Incidentally, the croc is known as the "mugger" crocodile and does lie in wait for prey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugger_crocodile). However, the manner in which it actually killed the peasant sounds more like the "death roll" described for the saltwater croc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile). One would need to delve deeper than Wikipedia to  sort it out further, but the conflation works, if conflation it is. 

Apparently all crocodilians ambush their prey and roll like that.
 
http://books.google.com/books?id=f8uFPKPzlnEC&pg=PA264
 
Jerry Friedman