DO CROCODILES EAT PIES?

After a walk yesterday with our dog Mavis, a friend of ours and her 6-year-old granddaughter, we came back to the house. The small girl noticed the 1995 Hutchinson's Encyclopedia on our bookshelves and pointed out that the spine was peeling off. This led to my telling her that books like these were what people looked things up in before the internet. I asked her to suggest something we might look up in this vast book.
     “Well," she said, “how do rubbers rub things out?"
     Good question. Too good. The encyclopedia had no answer.
     I suggested we might try, instead, to find out all about crocodiles, and showed her how we search for things in alphabetical order. We arrived at crocodiles and found a colour illustration of a large one lying down - a classic pose with belly spread out to the sides:

     “That crocodile is very fat," the little girl declared. “He's eaten too many pies."
     I said I was fairly sure crocodiles didn't eat pies - that they mostly ate raw fish, animals and birds.
    “Yes," she said, “but sometimes maybe a person walks past and gives him a quiche."

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