I saw a piranha in Nebraska once.
Granted, the fish in question—safely ensconced in a friend’s dorm room—subsisted entirely on Cheetos, old test papers and unwary college freshmen, which means it didn’t present a danger to normal folks.
But if piranhas splash around in Nebraska dormitories and gnaw on calculus textbooks (“the fish ate my homework, professor!”), maybe folks visiting Lake Havasu, Ariz., do have reason for concern over a South American fish attack. Maybe they’re just being prudent.
Or maybe not.
Let’s back up for a minute.
Lake Havasu is the real-world filming location for the 3-D remake of Piranha, the grade-Z horror film released into the wild today. The movie’s scaly CGI stars are supposedly prehistoric piranhas, jarred awake from a looooong hibernation by an underwater earthquake to terrorize bikinied spring breakers.
It’s cinema at its schlockiest—an R-rated gorefest that no one would take seriously. Would they?
But according to Lake Havasu officials, some guests refuse to dip their toes in the lake, fearing they might become the subject of a feeding frenzy. And that’s before the flick’s been released.
“Even with the assurances of our most astute hotel staff, they still have thumbed their noses at the thought of wading into our pearly blue waters,” Douglas Traub, president of the Lake Havasu City Convention and Visitors Bureau, told Entertainment Weekly‘s Popwatch blog.
Popwatch tells its readers that Lake Havasu is, as far as anyone knows, completely piranha free. In a post detailing 10 reasons to visit Lake Havasu, six are variations on the theme, “there are no piranhas.” Often with multiple exclamation marks.
“We have not had a piranha sighting,” Traub insists, much less any piranha-related fatalities. “It may be a long time coming.” Particularly if David Schleser (author of the book Piranhas—A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual) is right in saying that piranhas don’t seem to be that interested in devouring people in the first place. In fact, the critters are more often like Amazonian garbage disposals than cold-blooded killers. “You’ll pass villages in the Amazon basin, and we know there are piranhas of several species there, and the kids are swimming, and they don’t get attacked,” Schleser says. “Even the ducks swimming in the water won’t get attacked.”
Still, even as visitors flock to Lake Havasu in advance of the movie, some would-be swimmers are staying safely on the beach, hoping fervently that the hypothetical piranhas won’t sprout legs and make a mad dash for their coolers.
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