A man walked into the A and E department of a New Zealand hospital with an eel lodged up his bottom.
Staff at the Auckland City Hospital sent the man — who hasn't been named — for X-rays and a scan, which clearly showed the eel inside his rectum.
A source at the hospital told the New England Herald that the eel was "about the size of a decent sprig of asparagus."
How the eel came to be there isn't clear, but it was successfully removed and the man was discharged from hospital.
It's not known what species of eel it was — the Shortfin (Anguilla australis) and Longfin (Anguilla dieffenbachi) are both found in New Zealand along with the introduced Australian Longfin eel (Anguilla reinhardtii).
We don't know whether the eel survived its ordeal.
There have been other reports of fish in places where they shouldn't be. Back in 2010 PFK reported the story of a man in China who had a 50cm Swamp eel inserted into his rectum by some friends for a joke, after a bout of heavy drinking — but he wasn't so lucky. He died, and a post mortem found the eel in his rectum, where it had reportedly gnawed at his intestines, causing heavy internal bleeding.
And surgeons in Hong Kong also removed a live Swamp eel from a man's rectum after he was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pains. He later admitted that the eel had been inserted there to relieve constipation. He was later discharged from hospital.
Not to mention the 14-year-old boy who had a 2cm fish slip up his penis and into his bladder. His explanation was that he had been maintaining his aquarium when he need to go to the toilet. He said he was holding the fish in his hand when he was urinating and it slipped from his hand and into his urethra. Surgeons tried to use a technique known as cystourethroscopy to insert a special set of forceps attached down the boy's penis to remove the fish, but when that failed due to the slipperiness of the fish, they had to resort to using a rigid ureteroscope with a tool attached that is normally used for removing bladder stones.
The fish was apparently a species of Betta.
The boy recovered, but was subsequently sent for psychiatric counseling.
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