A Top Ender came face-to-face with a 1.7m saltwater crocodile when it wandered into the lounge room of the family home.
Jo Dodd, who lives at Bees Creek, 30km south of Darwin's centre, says aggressive barking from her pomeranian puppy Astro around 5.30am (CST) on Saturday had warned her something wasn't quite right.
It didn't take long to find out why because there, in her lounge room, was a 1.7 metre saltwater crocodile.
'I couldn't believe it,' Ms Dodd said on Monday.
'He was just watching us and was within lunging distance.'
Ms Dodd's home is built for the tropics and doesn't have walls all the way around.
So the croc just wandered in.
The 42-year-old mum assumed it was an escapee from the nearby crocodile farm - it had markings to indicate it had been in captivity.
She said the animal had apparently been staying on her three-hectare property since at least last Thursday.
And she reckons her family was lucky not to have been attacked.
Every day Ms Dodd walks past a dam on her property and on Thursday she was with one of her nine-year-old twin daughters when they noticed what they thought were duck prints.
'I have since been shown where the tail was, because they were croc prints,' she told AAP.
She said her daughter Electra had got out of her bed on Thursday night and walked into the main bedroom, which is not attached to the rest of the house.
'If she had walked in the laundry back door she would have stood on the croc,' Ms Dodd said.
After discovering the crocodile Ms Dodd called a ranger who took it away.
She said fire breaks on her property acted as a thoroughfare for crocodiles that escape from the Darwin Crocodile Farm and head for the nearby Elizabeth River.
Owner of the crocodile farm, Mick Burns, could not immediately be contacted for comment.
