Those Wacky Norwegians

[mrtonguetwista]

OSLO, Norway (AP) - November in Norway is full of hazards. Ice-slicked streets, moose on the roads and fierce cold. So when a woman turned up with a nasty cut on her finger at an emergency room at an Oslo hospital, doctors were surprised to learn that the cause was not an upset house cat or a stray dog.

It was a piranha, as in the nasty, brutish fish found in South America that has a fabled reputation for traveling in schools and stripping cows down to the bone in a feeding frenzy.

But Helle Hogner wasn't in South America. Instead, she was bitten while at work at Oslo's Reptile Park and showing visitors how to feed the fish inside one of the center's aquariums.

``One of the piranhas suddenly decided that I was a flying fish,'' she told Wednesday's edition of the Telemarksavisa, a northern Norway newspaper. ``At least it jumped into the air and snapped at one of my fingers and the blood just spurted. The piranha must have thought it was feeding time.''

The bite was quick and clean and didn't hurt to begin with, she said. However, she decided to have it looked at just to be safe.

``It caused a certain amount of commotion when a middle-aged woman turned up at the emergency ward after being bitten on the finger by a piranha in Oslo,'' she said of her visit to the hospital this week.

``In the end, all the physicians were gathered around. It was a rare experience for them.''