A housewife in Malaysia had the shock of her life when she stepped out of her house in the early hours of Sunday morning and was promptly bitten by a baby crocodile.

Madam Faridah Abd Ghani, 65, was up at 6am to clean the verandah of her house in Kampung Balik Batu in Melaka when she felt a bite on her left leg.

“It was dark at that time and I thought I had been bitten by a monitor lizard. I shouted for my family and when my son looked closely, he realised the animal was a crocodile,” she told Malay daily Harian Metro.

“If it were a lizard, it would have run away. But the crocodile stayed put and keep opening its jaws before my son trapped it with a food cover,” she said, adding that they immediately called the authorities.

Madam Faridah said her house is near the Tanjung Bidara beach and she has seen crocodiles swimming in the waters.

“However, this is the first time a crocodile has been seen in a residential house. Luckily, I was not hurt,” she said.

Masjid Tanah civil defence unit officer Shahrul Riza Saiful Bahry said upon receiving a call at 6.04am, a four-man team was immediately dispatched to Madam Faridah’s house, where it took custody of the 30cm-long reptile.

The authorities believed that it had wandered away from its natural habitat, and handed it over to the Department of Wildlife and National Park for further action.