It sounds like a Monty Python sketch - 'The Dead Piranha Sketch'.
At first, mystery surrounded the discovery of a 14 inch piranha in a Devon River. Environment agency staff were sampling the riverbank were amazed to discover the strange looking fish, a piranha more than twice the size of any of those of the species and furthermore it was thousands of miles from it's normal environment - South America.
This morning a small boy walked into a police station crying his eyes out. He had a cut on his knee and his anorak was covered with mud. A kind policewoman sat the lad down in one of the interview rooms and gave him a glass of milk and a biscuit. After a while he calmed down somewhat and was able to relate what had happened.
WPC Halibut reported that Timmy Trout, 10, from Newton Poppleford, won what he thought was a goldfish at a funfair, and for his 7th birthday, several years ago. He kept it as a pet and it grew and grew and grew. It then started to develop many teeth and so he decided to call it 'Nosher'.
Timmy discovered that Nosher had a liking for sweetcorn and he would like nothing better than to throw in a corn-on-the-cob into the tank and to watch it disappear within seconds.
Then one day Nosher went off his food and Timmy noticed that some of the fish's teeth were discoloured. So he took Nosher to the dentist to get his teeth checked out, but on his way, some big boys caught hold of him and grabbed the bag containing Nosher and threw him into the river.
The gang of big boys just run away laughing, leaving the poor little mite bawling.
Newton Poppleford is to be twinned with Fray Bentos in the Amazon basin.
