On Saturday, when my mom arrived to help us care for Adam (see, I have to get him in the story somehow!), she asked to see our new fish tank. I took her into the den and turned on the aquarium light. But there were only four fish in the tank. There had been five the night before. The fancy fin platy was missing!
I looked for the fishie in all of the nooks and crannies of the aquarium with no success. I knew that she must be dead. I was ready to open up the filter and skim out a dead fish, when I remembered that we had not installed the back cover of the aquarium lid. I groaned, knowing that the fish must had jumped out. And of course, it had to be the most expensive one of the lot!
Karl grabbed a flashlight and found her behind the TV cabinet. He started to reach for her, when I reminded him that breakfast was ready. So we left the dead fishie there to eat our french toast casserole.
After breakfast, Karl returned to the task of cleaning up the fish. I told him it would probably be easier to wait until she was good and dry, but he wanted to take care of it right then. Good thing he did!
As he grasped the fish, it jumped out of his hand! He got it again and tossed it back into the tank.
She sank to the bottom at first and sat in a corner. We stood there gaping. The poor thing had carpet fuzzies on her, and was unable to operate one of her side fins. Her talk looked a little worse for wear, too. But she was alive.
We turned of the filter for a while, since she had trouble swimming against the current. But now, three days later, she seems to be as good as new! We have no idea how long she was out of the tank. It was at least 45 minutes, which is about the time it took us to eat breakfast. But it could have been up to 10 hours, which was the last time we saw her in the tank.
So Karl no longer tells people that we have five fish. He says we have four fish and an amphibian.
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