Heart of the Nation: Howard Springs, 0835

CHRIS Peberdy has a perfectly ordinary relationship with nine of the 10 saltwater crocodiles he keeps at his home near Darwin.

Heart

CHRIS Peberdy has a perfectly ordinary relationship with nine of the 10 saltwater crocodiles he keeps at his home near Darwin.

"I look after them, and they want to eat me," he explains. But with Stampy it's different. He swims with her in the family pool, and takes her to friends' barbecues ("She loves chicken wings"), and tickles her neck until her eyes roll back in ecstasy like a dog. Stampy even appears in his wedding photos, posing with the groomsmen.

Peberdy, 30, is a reptile wrangler contracted by the NT government - he's the guy you call in the middle of the night when you find a snake in the bathroom or a croc in the yard. He picked up Stampy in the grounds of a suburban primary school eight years ago. She was then a very sick hatchling, and he felt sorry for her; instead of sending her off to a crocodile farm for eventual processing into "boots, bags and belts", he started nursing her back to health. And as he did so, he noticed a curious thing: she clearly enjoyed human contact. "She never tried to bite or resist. She never showed any anger - she doesn't have an angry bone in her body," says Peberdy, pictured in a shot from the new book Animal Tales (R.M. Williams Publishing, $20). He says they share "complete trust", even though "she could bite off my fingers with one snap of her jaws if she wanted to".

The ill health as a juvenile has stunted Stampy's growth, but she'll probably end up around 2.5m long. How things work out with Peberdy's baby daughter Katherine - whom Stampy has only met "at a distance" so far - is yet to be seen. But he's committed to the croc's lifetime care. His wife Claire, a nurse, doesn't mind. Which is just as well, because salties can live for 100 years. It affords Peberdy a unique study opportunity. "Something has undone millions of years of evolution with this animal," he says.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the family pool. There's a spa at one end, which Stampy adores. Peberdy admits it's an odd sight. "She's a primitive animal that's supposed to strike fear into people's hearts - and she's wallowing in bubbles."