Written by Matt Gibson / translated by Eric Lee

The Farm is a stone’s throw from the overpass where Highway 171 crosses Freeway 1.  In the parking lot the noise and exhaust from the highway along with the humidity and the picture of the giant crocodile on the sign made me feel like I was visiting a roadside attraction in Florida. It probably helped that I was wearing the cowboy hat that I’d brought to wave in the air while riding the crocodile.

The first animal that we encountered inside the Farm was the colossal crocodile for which the Farm is famous. The croc, imported from Thailand, was twenty-five years old, 5.2 meters long, and weighed one thousand two hundred and fifty kilograms we were told by owner Chiu ‘the Crocodile King’ Hsi-ho. The croc lived in a small swimming pool that looked like it was no more than one meter longer than the animal itself in either direction. None of the gates appeared to be wide enough for the croc to fit through. I think it’s safe to say that the croc didn’t move much. It had gained 500 kg since it arrived in Madou two and a half years earlier.

The croc was so fat that it may have been a record breaker. According to Wikipedia, the largest crocodile ever held in captivity was 6 m long and weighed 1,114 kg. The largest crocodile ever recorded was 8.6 m long and weighed 1,350 kg. Although I couldn’t find an official record, at 1250 kg and only 5.2 m long this croc was a shoe in for the fattest crocodile in the world.

Being an outdoors-man, I was disturbed by the croc’s cramped living space. But later, upon reflection, I realized that in North America there were many people, entire communities in fact, living in mobile homes with big screen TVs who had made it their life’s goal to eat as much, and move as little, as possible. So, although I disliked the idea of the croc being forced into this lifestyle, there seemed to be a possibility that he may not have minded the arrangement.

The croc’s obesity was great for the Farm because it made it safe for people to sit on the croc. It was simply too slow to be dangerous. That’s a great selling point when you’re catering to camera happy Taiwanese tourists.

Christine and I took pictures of each other sitting on the beast. I waved my cowboy hat in the air. Afterwards we felt guilty. Our guilt turned to revulsion when Chiu gave us an extra show. There was a second, smaller crocodile living in an adjoining pen. Chiu shook and kicked the smaller crocodile until it defecated in fear. He then put the feces into a large metal pan and fed it to the giant croc.

The Crocodile King Farm is a walled-in square of land covering about three-quarters of an acre. The middle of the Farm is occupied by a large pond smothered in lily pads and ringed by a trail. The entrance and gift shop span the west side of the Farm. The remaining three sides are lined with animal cages and pens.

If you follow the trail from the crocodile pen around the pond to the right you will next encounter a llama and a mini-pony (about four feet tall) in a small fenced-in area. Then you‘ll walk past several exotic birds, including a beautiful but vicious looking ground-hornbill. Beyond that, at the corner where the trail turns left, there‘s a small group of Formosan deer, and beside them in a separate cage, an albino deer. The next stretch of trail has even more caged birds, including several featherless chickens. This section also includes an ostrich, an emu, and a cassowary, which is a large prehistoric looking bird that has a bright blue head with a dinosaur-like arch of bone sticking out of the top. Opposite the emu live two mutant ducks with foot-like protrusions growing out of their butts.

The trail turns left again. The final leg of the circle is home to the most disturbing of the mutants, the mutant goats. There are two of them and they live in separate pens. One is a three-legged goat with horns growing out its front left foot. The other has a bone-like protrusion the size of a wine bottle growing from the center of its chest. As I photographed the pair, the three-legged goat got its horned foot stuck high in the bars of the wall between the two pens, and couldn’t get it out. While gazing at the goats, I considered their life prospects beyond the freak farm.

The goats had probably come from normal Taiwanese farms. I wondered how these animals would have been treated had they stayed on those farms. I reasoned that they’d probably have been killed to prevent them from passing on their abnormalities to their offspring. Perhaps, I fancied, the Crocodile King Farm had saved these goats from prejudicial slaughter. Perhaps it had also saved the featherless chickens and foot-butted ducks. It was a comforting idea.

Opposite the goats was a wall lined with windows looking in on various exotic reptiles and snakes, and behind it two hallways lined with even more windows and cages. Each cage occupied about the same area as two single mattresses laid end to end. Some of those cages contained single crocodiles. Some contained several crocodiles lying in a heap. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t think of any reason why these crocodiles might be better off in these stuffy windowless cages than in a river or lake.

When we returned to the entrance, there was a long yellow snake sitting out in the waiting area for visitors to take pictures with. I wrapped it around myself and Christine took my picture. Then we looked around in the gift shop and took funny pictures of each other with our heads in the mouth of a plastic crocodile head. Here we saw the cutest of all the mutants: a tiny two-headed turtle.

Then we left.

We felt dirty afterwards. As a traveler, I try to think of exhibits like the Crocodile King Farm as cultural artifacts. I mentally filed the Crocodile King Farm with the other unseemly attractions that tourists flock to like Bangkok’s ‘ping-pong’ sex shows and Pamplona’s running of the bulls. I suspect that after reading this article, some people will dislike the Crocodile King Farm. Despite the critical tone of this article, I don’t think that the Farm is a completely bad thing. In fact, I’ve thought a great deal about the ethics of the Crocodile King Farm, and I’ve concluded that it’s neither good nor bad, but that it lies in a grey area. I offer the following explanation.

If we want to live in a world where all people understand and respect nature, then it’s necessary to have places like the Crocodile King Farm where people who would otherwise not be able to can experience nature’s infinite variety. Words and pictures can never replace the psychological connection that occurs between two conscious beings occupying the same space at the same time, and taking all of the people in the world on safaris is obviously beyond our means.

As a business, the Crocodile King Farm’s ability to provide quality accommodations to the animals is bound by financial limitations. If customers demanded to see cleaner, larger pens, the management of the Farm would have to comply. They would also have to raise their prices. I was willing to pay NT$200 for my afternoon of natural wonders. But would the tourists who visit the Farm be willing to pay NT$500 per person in order to ensure the humane treatment of the animals? Sadly, they probably would not.

If you agree with these points, then it’s difficult to lay all the blame on the Farm’s management for the treatment of the animals, although they surely deserve a share of it. If that is the case, then who is responsible for fixing this situation? If there is any institution that’s obliged to educate the public and protect the welfare of animals, it’s the government. If you’re angered by the conditions at the Crocodile King Farm, and would like to take positive action, then I suggest that the most sensible thing to do would be to petition the government, not to close the Farm, but to subsidize and monitor it, so that it can continue to educate people about the strange and fascinating creatures that inhabit our world, and, hopefully, offer those animals a place they can live happily.

Crocodile King Farm
Location:
91-1, Siaopi Village, Madou Township, Tainan County (near the junction of Highway 171 and Freeway 1 in Madou Township, approximately a 30-minute drive from Tainan.)

Entry
Adults: NT$200
Children and Students: NT$150

Telephone: (06) 570-2261