Yikes! A man fishing in the Catawba River near Mount Holly, NC caught a piranha last week. And not a little one, either — this piranha weighed 1 pound 4 ounces, and bit the man’s pocketknife hard enough to leave marks on the blade.
I say “Yikes!” because I have gone swimming in the Catawba River.
Well, technically, I swam in Lake Wylie, but it amounts to the same thing. Lake Wylie is a South Carolina reservoir that was created by damming the Catawba. And Lake Wylie is downstream from where the piranha was caught.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a panic attack now.
UPDATE: In her comment, my mother relays the news that the fish wasn’t a piranha after all.
Now it turns out, according to The Herald, that the fish wasn’t a piranha at all, but a relative (they gave its name, which I can’t remember) identified by the rows of teeth in its jaw. I believe this one had two rows, and a piranha has only one row. However, this fish doesn’t pose any harm to humans, although it didn’t treat the knife blade very well, and despite the two rows of teeth. So you can relax.