Resort Feels Pinch as Piranha Attack Guests

Piranha have been feeding on tourists in a south Brazilian resort, and worried local authorities are ready to use an old Indian method to capture the flesh-eating fish.

Last December, piranha injured 30 tourists in the resort of San Churi, and wary vacationers have shunned the place since.

The fish “bit off nipples, fingers and other chunks of human flesh,” Ramino Toledo, an agronomist on the team assigned to counterattack the piranha, said Wednesday.

Toledo, speaking from Uruguaiana, a town of about 120,000 in Rio Grande do Sul state, said that tablets of cow’s blood will be dropped into San Churi Lake to attract the fish. Then, an anesthetic made from a native plant, used by Brazilian Indians to fish for piranha, will be spread over the water.