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by Harry Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ · Poetry · Nature · #974253
A poem about the candiru fish.
If ever you find yourself in the Amazon,
heed this advice or you might be put upon.
If going in the Amazon or Oranoco Rivers,
knowing of this fish will give you the shivers.

The candiru (also called carnero) is a tiny,
parasitic catfish whose appendages are spiny.
A quarter inch wide, up to three inches long,
they can go places where they don’t belong.

These fish are the only vertebrates that act
as a parasite of Man; that’s a little-known fact.
Candirus normally invade a larger fish’s gill,
where they attach and drink the blood at will.

They follow the gill’s nitrogen stream to find
their prey. If finding a human, they don’t mind.
Urinating in the water attracts the candiru fish
to enter your urethra – the last place you’d wish.

After swimming up your urethra, it flares its spines.
Excruciating pain produces in you moans and whines.
The fish causes bleeding and unrelenting, intense pain.
Surgery is required…or another way, which I’ll explain.

The native remedy is to force an extract of Xaqua plant
and the Buitach apple into the urethra. This will grant
relief by killing the fish and slowly dissolving it away.
How about inserting a fish-dissolving agent “there”, eh?

So, heed my warning: When swimming in a river there
in the Amazon, you mustn’t go skinny-dipping anywhere.
For Heaven’s sake, wear your swimwear tight as skin,
and never, never pee in the water that you are wading in.



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