Grumpy old man: A fish story.

From the Jerusalem Post.

Last summer, reputable news outlets were reporting that a fisherman dragging his nets in Øresund Sound between Denmark and Sweden had snagged a pacu, a large cousin to the piranha.

Forget that the fish had turned up in Scandinavian waters, thousands of nautical miles north of its decidedly less chilly Amazonian habitat. What really hooked these news outlets was word of the pacu’s favored dish.

“If they bite, they can bite hard...especially when they bite you where you really don’t want to be bitten,” one Peter Resk Møller, of Denmark’s Museum of Natural History, was quoted as saying.

Another expert from the museum, Henrik Carl, tied up the loose ends.

“There have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where some men have had their testicles bitten off,” he said. “[The pacu] bite because they’re hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth.”

Immediately, Nordic men were urged to keep their trunks on when swimming in the region’s bracing waters – until, that is, the gentlemen from the Danish museum admitted they had been stretching their fish story a bit, though all in good, clean fun.

“All we said last week (with a smile) was that male swimmers should keep their pants on in case there are more pacus out there in our cold Baltic waters.

***** If I got nipped on the nadgers I think I could turn decidedly grumpy also.