Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Where are you, Beta?! The story of losing a fish.

I don't know if I ever posted about our newest family members, Alpha and Beta. One of Andrew's coworkers gave him two beta fish for the kids. Oliver loves them! He feeds them beta fish food and says hi to them every day. He calls them "Alphabet" and "Beta," which is pretty cute.

Well, today, do I have a story about Alpha and Beta! Andrew and I are working on emptying our house of non-essentials. We want to put our home on the market within the next month or two. We've put a lot of work into improving the home, and we hope there's enough equity in it to possibly afford a single family home. That's the background to this story.

I was packing up our old Wii, the games, and the Rock Band stuff to take over to my parents' house temporarily. I moved Alpha's little tank and Beta's little tank over to our sink vanity. I thought they were out of reach from the kids. As I'm working on clearing out our game closet, I hear a loud thump from behind me and a big sploosh!

Jo knocked Beta's tank over.

I dashed over to the floor, picked up the tank, and quickly filled it with some water straight from the tap. I look for Beta to quickly plunk her back in the water. Later, I found out Beta fish don't have gills and don't breathe in the water (they surface for oxygen). I didn't know that at the time, and so I thought I only had precious seconds. I couldn't find her anywhere!

I start combing through the fish rocks on the carpet, and I hear myself yelling, "Beta?? Beta!" As if that will help me find the fish. Oliver's upset that I'm yelling for the fish, and Jo's just upset in general. They're whining and crying, and I'm using my fingers to feel all over the carpet to find the fish, yelling like a nut.

I finally found her lying in a corner in the hallway. She must have flown 3 feet! She was far from the rocks. I plunked her back in her tank, and--imagine my surprise--she started swimming around right away! I ran downstairs to get the distilled water that we keep at room temperature for the fish. Then, I ran back upstairs, poured most of the tap water out, and refilled her tank with distilled. I think she's OK. I think.

Alpha and Beta aren't going to hang around our house much longer. As I said, we're moving out all non-essentials. I think they might join Andrew at work.

Anyway, just because plain text is boring, here are some photos of our fish from a few months ago, when they first arrived at our home.

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