"Captain Electro bites the dust" After asking the native guide several times if he was absolutely certain he was not afraid to pick up the electric eel he gingerly lifted all six feet of it out of the water. I was looking down at his feet when the creature discharged. His toes spread apart like fans and he lurched like a pithed frog then fell over backward. Afterward he explained that the reason he was not afraid is because he had never touched one before. Later that night I was fishing catfish with the chief of the village and I told him what happened. After he stopped laughing he told me this story. His grandmother had painful arthritis. Upon the discovery of a large electric eel that was trapped in a puddle of water at the back of a receding lagoon, the witch doctor instructed granny and thirty villagers to follow him to the lagoon. With 15 villagers on each side of grandma, all holding hands, the witch doctor instructed grandma and the group to walk forward, still all holding hands with grandma in the middle He instructed grandma to stand on the eel. Everyone got nailed, ankle deep in mud, by several hundred volts. I asked him if it worked. He told me grandma never complained of pain again and never had to go back for another treatment.