Getting Nervous Yet?

Oh sure, we know there are people who think we're a bit over the top on our warnings about the animal uprising that's going on. We'll keep trying to warn you all, though. Because it's very important. Further proof of the conspiracy comes today from North Dakota. A woman on a casual fishing trip pulled out an unusual fish. She was suspicious and turned it over to officials who confirmed what she had thought. It wasn't a harmless trout.

It was a piranha. In North Dakota.

The small fish with big, sharp teeth is native to the Amazon River in South America.

Knapp said the catch was confirmed by biologists. The state Game and Fish Department believes the four-inch-long red-bellied piranha probably came from someone's aquarium.

"It had to have been somebody's pet," said Greg Power, the state fisheries chief.

Introducing a foreign species to North Dakota waterways is illegal, but officials said they have no idea who put the piranha in the reservoir, which Power said is a small fishery on an unnamed creek that has been dammed. Knapp said the warm-water fish would not have survived the winter, anyway.

Power said the piranha likely was too small to have done any damage to other fish in the reservoir, which has trout, panfish and other species.

He said he has heard of piranha being caught in other states, but that this might be a first for North Dakota.

"We have had goldfish that were put in (lakes) … but never a piranha," Power said

The other day we warned you that the reptilian horde of alligators was heading for Minnesota. Now there are piranha in North Dakota. Pretty soon there will be a brand new expression for water skiing in the Northern United States.

It will be known as "trolling".