In recent years, New Yorkers have been repeatedly alarmed after ambiguously monstrous sea creatures, including the Montauk monster, the parasitic sea lamprey, and the snakehead fish were spotted in our neck of the woods. But as anxiety-provoking as all of them were, at least we could comfort ourselves at night knowing that there were no evil fish out there aiming for our testicles. Well, there goes that: a testicle-devouring fish was found swimming in NJ, just 15 miles outside of NYC.

Retired bus driver Tom Boylan, 77, hooked a 10-inch Pacus, a cousin of the piranha, at Third Ward Veterans Memorial Park in Passaic on Saturday. “I would say ‘shocked’ is a good way to describe how I felt,” he told NorthJersey. “We call them ‘tank busters.’ We don’t even sell them because they grow so big,” said Pat Egan, manager at Absolutely Fish.

The Pacu made headlines last year after it attacked swimmers' coin purses in coastal waters between Sweden and Denmark. "They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth," Henrik Carl, a fish expert at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, told The Local.

On the plus side, Egan said it's unlikely that this goolies-chomper is an emissary sent to scout our land for delicious giggle berries: “Most likely, someone had it in their fish tank and it grew too big, so they dumped it." Also, New Yorkers need not fear any fish as long as Carmelo Anthony is still playing for the Knicks.

Update: As Lt Worf pointed out, the original quote about swimmers needing to watch their testicles was "half a joke" on the part of Professor Peter Rask Moller. "We did say that we recommend men to keep their swimsuits tied up until we know if there are more pacus out there in our waters," Moller told CNN. "Of course, this is half a joke since it is very unlikely that you would actually meet one here and that it would bite you. It's up to people themselves how careful they want to be. I'll keep my shorts on, though."

But still: it's only half a joke. And even half a joke about this subject matter warrants extreme hysteria, don't you agree?