http://www.norwalkadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-snakebit3aug08.story?coll=s... Despite published reports of the "untimely demise" of Trei, a northern snakehead on display at Pagano's Seafood, the fish is alive and well and gobbling up goldfish by the handful, owner Kris Drumgold said yesterday. Apparently giving new meaning to the snakehead's nickname, Frankenfish, Trei was swimming menacingly with the goldfish yesterday morning, just hours after a Norwalk newspaper hit the stands with a front page story that pronounced the fish dead of "broken gills." About two weeks ago, Trei, one of 28 species of Chinese snakeheads capable of walking on land and surviving out of water for days, was put on display in the Scribner Avenue seafood store. Snakeheads have been reviled in the news since they were discovered in a pond in Maryland and a lake in North Carolina. Biologists fear the snakeheads, which have no known predators, are capable of cleaning out ponds and streams of other species of fish and wriggling over dry land into new areas to eat more. Unlike the lead character in Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein," Trei was not brought back to life, Drumgold said. The fish unwittingly took part in his own "staged death" for a store clerk. As a practical joke, Drumgold said he faked Trei's demise by filleting a fish that looked like him and presenting it to the clerk, who then reported to the Norwalk newspaper that the fish had died. It is illegal to possess snakeheads in 13 states, and U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has proposed a federal ban on importing live snakeheads into the country. They are legal to own in Connecticut and Mass, but it is illegal to release them. The state Department of Environmental Protection is looking at a possible ban of the razor-toothed creature, said Rick Jacobson, assistant director for inland fisheries at DEP.