Dom Davies has filmed spectacled caimans in South America.
He was not, he will tell you, genuinely fooled by a shoe in the River Avon.
Just for a split second, though.
The Bristol Crocodile has been haunting the city’s waterways since 2014, when a bus driver first reported a sighting.
Nobody has ever found it. That hasn’t slowed things down — there have been art installations, a documentary in 2023, and the kind of fond civic mythology that a city quietly decides it deserves.
Dom, a 38-year-old wildlife filmmaker, knew all of this.
He also knew, on a rational level, that no living crocodile would survive in the River Avon.
“Obviously I didn’t think any alive crocodile would be in that freezing water,” he said.
“And if it was, it would be dead.”
Then he saw the shoe.
“It looked just like a spectacled caiman”
The object was protruding from the surface at exactly the right angle.
Dom grabbed his phone and filmed it.
“Just for a split second that shoe was pretty convincing,” he said.
“It looked just like a spectacled caiman — a South American species I’ve filmed.”
He posted the clip on 26 April. It has since been viewed nearly 48,000 times and collected over 1,200 likes.
Dom is at pains to point out he was in on the joke throughout.
“I do want to make it clear — as a wildlife filmmaker, I knew it wasn’t going to be a real croc,” he said.
“It was more for a joke.”
The comments arrived in force. “It actually does look just like a spectacled caiman,” wrote one viewer.
Another offered a philosophical warning: “It’s a trick so the next time you actually see a crocodile you’ll just think it’s a shoe.”
One person claimed insider knowledge of the croc’s whereabouts, adding that it was actually an alligator and that they had photos. They did not share the photos.
The best comment, by some distance: “Plot twist — the shoe is actually a Croc.”
Why it matters
Dom’s clip is a small masterclass in how local mythology functions online.
The Bristol Crocodile exists because people want it to — it’s been generating art, film, and community identity for over a decade without once showing up.
A wildlife expert with genuine credentials playing along, even briefly, with a waterlogged trainer is exactly the kind of content that keeps a legend alive.
For creators building around natural history or local storytelling, there’s something worth noting here: the myth does the work, and all you have to do is show up near a river with your phone.
The River Avon, for the record, does actually have otters and beavers in it. Dom has seen them himself.
What’s next
The Bristol Croc remains at large. The shoe has been identified. The documentary already exists.
Someone, somewhere, is probably planning the sequel.
