Jaunted

Snakehead Fish

Daily Animal Terror Travel: This Time, It's Snakehead Fish!

August 7, 2008 at 4:07 PM | 0 Comments

The super-scary, walks-on-land, razor-toothed snakehead fish--that's so frightening that even a dead one threw Lincolnshire, England into a panic in February--has once again washed up on American shores. And it's coming to get you, bedroom communities of Upstate New York!

In Wawayanda, just south of Catskill Park, officials have ordered that any snakeheads must be shot or otherwise killed on sight to keep them from infesting the Hudson downstream. (Once the ferocious fish invade an ecosystem, it's next to impossible to clear 'em out.) The state Department of Environmental Conservation is using designer pesticides to poison the baddies in local waters while residents are poaching them with .22s from golf carts. Seriously.

While the killing may seem like swatting flies with a cruise missile, you don't mess around with these terrors. To wit:

Gale A. Norton, United States secretary of the interior when snakeheads were discovered in Maryland in 2002, called them "something from a bad horror movie" before ordering a federal ban. Since then the fish have spawned not one but two bad horror movies, "Snakehead Terror" and "Frankenfish."

Related Stories:
· A Potion to Beat Back "Frankenfish" [NYT]
· Snakehead Fish Caught In Lincolnshire [Jaunted]