Staten Island is kind of the black sheep of the New York City boroughs, probably because you have to take a ferry to get there.
It also has more greenery and outdoors space than the other, larger, more populated boroughs. Kaitlyn Crabbe, 11, was taking advantage of that space to fish for some bluegills and catfish at Brooks Pond in Clove Lakes Park. She was looking for a slight tug on her line when she got a bit more than she bargained for.
“It was so heavy, I thought it was a turtle, but it was swimming really fast,” she said, according to the New York Times.
After a bit of a fight, Crabbe pulled in a 10-inch-long red-belly piranha.
“It was just flopping on the ground and everyone just stepped away from it. When it opened its mouth, you could see that it had a lot of sharp teeth, and could have easily bitten off a finger. I never saw a fish like that, so I had no clue what it was,” said Crabbe.
The piranha weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces, and Kaitlyn’s grandfather, Robert, smartly let this fish die instead of releasing it, which is normally their practice.
“It was a big, fat, sassy fish,” Mr. Crabbe said. “My concern was that a lot of children go there to fish on their own without an adult and they wouldn’t recognize the species if they caught it, and when they were taking the hook out of its mouth, they’d get severely bitten.” –Brian McClintock
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