buckets of fresh blood

As I was explaining to Dan the other day, prior coverage of piranhas on this blog briefly made me a popular haunt for aficionados of the toothy fish - so I always feel duty bound to report on any developments in the field. Although truthfully, on the subject of piranhas (and dinosaurs, incidentally), I still feel the same way I did as a child, in other words I find it increasingly hard to not follow the word with a mental exclamation mark. Piranhas!! Dinosaurs!!

The Guardian news blog carries an interesting story today. A 52 year old Slovenian, Martin Strel, has previously "swum the 1,867-mile length of the Danube before building up to the Mississippi two years later and then, in 2004, the 2,488 miles of the Yangtze". Now he's turning to the frankly terrifying and spiky-fish infested waters of the Amazon.

He's not too worried about the pain:

"As a young boy, I was beaten a lot by my parents and schoolmasters. This no doubt contributed greatly to my ability to ignore pain, and [to] endure."

...but he's taking a few precautions regardless:

"My escort boats will carry all the time buckets of fresh blood to pour in the water in case the piranhas or other fish attack me."

Yikes. I hope that'll be enough - all good piranha fans remember Obidos 1981:

"it is thought a shoal of the fish devoured up to 300 people when their boat capsized and sank near Obidos in Brazil in September 1981."

Oh yeah, and he's "swimming for peace, friendship and clean waters".