Stephanie Kirsop didn’t believe her son when he called to tell him a crocodile was lurking in the creek near their home.

The family lives in the temperate coastal city of Newcastle, which is 1,200 miles south of Australia’s crocodile habitat in the tropical north.

Lionel Saunders, 12, and his friends spotted the metre-long juvenile crocodile early on Saturday afternoon. Authorities were initially skeptical of the reported find, but by Sunday evening they had captured the elusive reptile.

“My son was taking videos because he was trying to convince me it was real and I didn’t believe him. It looked like a crocodile but I said, no, it’s a log,” Kirsop said on Tuesday.

“He called me a little later and said, ‘I’m so serious mum. You’ve got to come over here and take a look,'” Kirsop said. “The whole ride down I thought this was going to be a trick. They were going to laugh at me.”

She had no doubt that it was a crocodile when she arrived.

“There’s a little crocodile just swimming in the creek where the local kids go fishing and sometimes the kids swim there too. Wow,” Kirsop said.

She called a wildlife rescue service and was told that crocodiles do not live in the area. Kirsop sent her own photos and video as proof.

Kirsop was referred to the Australian Reptile Park, which keeps its crocodiles in a temperature-controlled environment.

Park manager Billy Collett said he suspects the images may be fakes created by artificial intelligence. But police have confirmed the crocodile is in Ironbark Creek.

“I was a little suspicious because we get a lot of phone calls. These days with artificial intelligence, it’s so crazy,” Collett said.

He recognized that it was an Australian freshwater crocodile, or crocodylus johnstoni, a smaller and less dangerous species than saltwater crocodileswhich can grow to over 20 feet, weigh over a ton and have a bite force strong enough to crush a human skull.

Freshwater crocs can still be dangerous.

“They are capable of causing serious injury,” Collett said of the smaller species.

Collett’s team caught the crocodile on Sunday night 2 miles from where it was first spotted.

“I just wanted to get him out of there because he would have died in the winter,” Collett said. It is currently autumn in the southern hemisphere.

The crocodile is healthy and will remain at the park until authorities decide where it should go for good, Collett said. Crocs are protected by Australian law.

He suspects the crocodile was a pet that was released into the wild after it grew too big for an aquarium or too dangerous.

Between December 1985 and April 2024, there were 34 non-fatal attacks and 14 fatal attacks by wild saltwater crocodiles in Queensland, Australia.

In August 2024, police said human remains were found inside a large crocodile suspected of murdering a tourist in Australia. A month earlier, a 12-year-old girl was grabbed by a crocodile while swimming with her family in a stream in the Northern Territory. her remains were found days later and wildlife wardens killed a 14-foot crocodile.