Eels, any schoolchild knows, were the true main course at the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, largely because the eels themselves had eaten all the turkeys. While it's difficult to imagine now, because they are so disgusting and now so rare, eels played a critical role in the economy and culture of colonial New England. Once our nation's rivers were glossy and black with majestic herds of eels, but they proved too tempting as a food source, and many found them to be just too spooky to tolerate. What eels were not eaten were often killed out of sheer angry terror. By the time Benjamin Franklin, that famous turkey-lover, began attacking eels in a series of vicious aphorisms in his almanacs, they had alrady largely disappeared from the landscape and recorded history.
And here is a video of a moray eel biting off a man's finger:
2 comments:
I, myself, have killed eels for sport. After fishing, we would take fish heads and put them in tide pools. The fish heads would bring in crabs and ultimately hungry eels. We would then spear those SOBs. We never ate them though... we acted out of pure blood lust. Well... I have used eel for bait and/or chum. So their killing was not completely in vain.
I wonder how many RPM's that guy can do with his toe-thumb.
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