TAME EELS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3584, 8 January 1927, Page 4

TAME EELS.

AT LAKE OHIA. About two years ago Professor Drummond writing in the Otago Witness, said:—“A Waipukurau farmer last year supplied notes on a family of tame eels in a creek on his property. A resident of Whatuwhiwhi, near Mangonui, North Auckland, has reported somewhat similar experiences of a lady who lives near Lake Ohia. “The lake,”

he writes, “is only a few chains in diameter. Hard sandstone slopes very gradually down to the edge of the water. Regularly at sundown the lady goes to the lake to feed the eels that live there. She places the food a few inches from the water, the eels wriggle out, each takes a piece, and then flop back into the water. She can pick them up and fondle them. If the food is placed further and further from the water they come further up the bank, looking for the pieces. The presence of other people laughing and talking makes no difference to them. When I visited the lake cooked meat was on the menu, but I was assured that boiled rice went like hot cakes. The lady first induced one shy eel to approach and accept food. She now feeds more than twenty-five every evening; they always are- waiting for her.” Mr. 11. W. Mclntosh, of Kaitaia, has a family of some fifty tame eels in the Kaitaia River opposite his residence, which he feeds regularly. When they hear the sound of his footsteps “they can’t get there too fast,” and by the time he gets down to the river, they are all waiting impatiently. At times when the grass is damp they will wriggle out on the bank to secure the food. Northlander.