Best of Italy

How would you like to be invited to dinner and then find out that you are the dinner. Well, that's exactly what happened to a few unsuspecting businessmen invited over for dinner by a local Mafia boss in Italy.

While searching for weapons at the home of this particularly hard-nosed mob boss, the anti-Mafia police squad stumbled upon a Caiman crocodile on the man's terrace. The creature weighed 88 pounds and was almost 6 feet in length. The mob boss kept the croc well-fed on a diet of live rabbits and mice. Apparently, the mob boss would take his invited guests up to the terrace and threaten to set the beast loose on them if they didn’t pay him extortion money and give him whatever favours he requested. Nice!

That particular species of crocodile originates from South America. No one knows how the man managed to smuggle the creature into Italy, although I'm sure the Italian police will try to find that out. Needless to say, charges are pending.

The creativity of the Mafia is often shocking. I once learned of a man who was told by the mafia to kill himself or be killed by them. The man did as told and dived headfirst into a well.