You pass the lamp post, then you enter the land of Spare Oom. That’s where the Eels live. Though not the shrieking variety…

We thought we had three eels living in our front stream.  A big one, a medium one, and a little one (quickly dubbed “daddy,” “mommy” and “baby” by our friends, a family of 3 girls).  That’s what we thought until we brought the ham out…now we know there are actually more than we can count.  We’ve tried them on salami and tahr, but ham seems to be the favorite so far.  Eels are my kind of pets–feed them when you want to, don’t when you don’t want to, and no further ownership duties. I guess they may lack a little in the Warm and Fuzzy department….

That black slithery shadow is one of the larger eels. I looked up their life cycles, and they’re the reverse of salmon. Adults live in fresh water streams for their whole long lives (like 50+ years), then when they’re ready to mate they go back to the ocean, to some deep trench near Tonga (no one really knows), where they lay their eggs. Their tiny babies drift back to the New Zealand coast on ocean currents, and some small percentage makes it into the streams to grow to a size that can terrorize ducklings. Doesn’t make you want to dabble your toes in our stream, now does it?