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I bought a clay crocodile from a boy my age on the roadside in 1980s South Africa. My cousin bought one too. Mine wasn’t just shaped like a crocodile; it behaved like one. It hid itself in the mangroves, perfectly still. Waited for the one right moment — then lunged. It never missed.

My cousin didn’t share my sense of wonder, envy perhaps. She told me it smashed soon after I got it, and I cried the whole way home.