Monday, April 27, 2009

A Fish Tale Or How Long Can A Fish Survive Out Of Water?

Meet Sunny.

Sunny was at the center of some amazing drama in this house on Friday night. It was bedtime and I walked into Baby Girl's room to do the bedtime storytime/snuggles/kisses routine. I reminded her to feed Sunny and at the same time turned to look at the fish bowl only to notice that Sunny was nowhere to be seen. I looked from a different angle, thinking perhaps Sunny was just behind the little treasure chest. No Sunny. I got the little net and gently turned the chest on it's side thinking Sunny may have swam through one of the holes and was trapped under it. No Sunny. At this point Baby Girl and Sister Girl were quite alarmed and we began looking outside the bowl since it was obvious Sunny was not in the bowl.

The bowl sits on top of a bookshelf but Sunny wasn't on top of the bookshelf. We looked in the floor. No Sunny. We looked at the shelves. No Sunny. I then moved the bookshelf out from the wall and there, belly up, tail slightly curved to the right, lay Sunny. There was not a sign of life. No movement. Nothing. My heart sank. I said, "I'm so sorry but it looks like Sunny died." Baby Girl began to sob hysterically and ran to my arms. Sister Girl was crying as well. So I sat on the floor with Baby Girl in my arms rocking her back and forth while I rubbed Sister Girl's back as she sat beside me crying softly. Baby Girl kept saying, "But I took good care of my fish. Why did it die?" And I just kept reassuring her that she had taken excellent care of her fish but it was just an accident and Sunny had somehow managed to jump out of the bowl. It was all very sad.

And then as Baby Girl began to calm a bit we heard it. It was quiet but we all heard that little "flip" sound. Baby Girl yelled, "It moved!" And sure enough, Sunny was no longer lying there belly up, tail slightly to the side but was now lying on it's side. Sunny was alive! I grabbed the net and quickly scooped up and returned Sunny to the fish bowl. Sunny zipped and darted around clearly so happy to be back home and able to, you know, breath. The girls are convinced it is nothing short of a miracle that Sunny is with us. We have absolutely no idea how long Sunny had been out of the
bowl. As for the why of it all, I'm wondering if the water had gotten too warm. We didn't have the air on and it was about 81 degrees in the house that day and Baby Girl's room gets a good bit of sun. We will be more careful about that in the future. We'll definitely be keeping a close eye on our little escape artist. And we are very glad, that in the end, we have a happy fish tale to tell.

3 comments:

Kirsty said...

LOL hooray for Sunny the miracle fish. My sister was telling me about coming home from work and her dogs going all nuts at the little gate that led into the kitchen, they were very excited about something on the floor. When she went over there she discovered her goldfish, it was all dried up (this is Australia after all) but there was miraculously a sign of life. She popped it back in the bowl and it sort of reconstituted like a dried up contact lens when you put it in saline solution...

Gives you more respect for goldfish doesn't it.

Poor Sunny listening to you lament his loss instead of saving him, it sounds like my worst nightmare :D

Denise said...

Wow!!! Glad to hear Sunny is ok.

We have had a few escape artist fish over the years, but none of our survived their escape. We finally got a lid for our aquarium both to keep the fish in & to keep the cats out.

Pam said...

I'm glad Sunny is okay. That happened to my son's fish several years ago, but it was too late when
we found him.