For some reason this week our fish went sceptic. I don’t know why. The water in the tank is good. PH is good. Everything is good. This happened a couple of months ago but that time the water proved to be suddenly way too acidic, the water coming from our tap the culprit. We got things under control and the fish promptly recovered. Then, bam, a few days ago they went sceptic again. We could find no cause. We began treatment with the medicine that fixed them up last time and not only have they not gotten any better but Dylan suddenly bloated up Saturday with what seemed to be a major case of dropsy.
We’ve had Dylan since shortly after we moved in here. He’s a huge goldfish. “What do you feed him, hamburger?” we’ve been asked. Because he’s gigantic.
We’re kind of attached to him. Or were. The other two goldfish are nice, but we really liked Dylan. He had personality. As much personality as a goldfish is going to have. He spent a lot of time watching us. He liked to play. He loved thwapping the top of the water with his tail. When he wanted my attention he would thwap his tail on the side of the tank to attract it.
While Saturday evening (when all this went down) we scurried around then held our heads in our hands while trying to figure out any way to save our fish, H.o.p. made up his own peculiar sort of death vigil chart. He made a graph with a line for each fish showing how close to death it might be. When one seemed to get worse he would move the line to reflect that and when one seemed to improve he would move the line to indicate its improvement. He suggested we feed them peas and then decided each one had made dramatic improvement and adjusted the lines accordingly. “I saved the fish!”
We told him it was not likely the fish would live. (I tried to use a contraction there but WordPress suddenly will not let me use an apostrophe this morning. Crazy WordPress.)
“I want to see where you bury Dylan,” he replied.
Anyway, the other two fish are still alive at the moment, they may indeed make it, are looking better today, but Dylan is now in a bag and they are going out to bury him. H.o.p. seems to be all right with things. He just wants Dylan buried. He does not want Dylan put in the trash out back. (Darn, why is not WordPress letting me use the apostrophe!)
I have a rather cheerier post to make later about our new upstairs neighbor.
Leave a Reply