Is There a Fish Doctor in the House?

As I came downstairs this morning, a bright red flash of movement swirling around in the fish tank caught my eye. Barely awake, (since the girls kept their promise of staying up almost the whole night) all I wanted was a cup of something warm to drink, and a quiet comfy spot on the couch where I could veg out to my hearts content before the little hellions regained consciousness.

Peering into the still cloudy water, I realized two things:
(1) After yesterday's thorough cleaning, the water filter wasn't running correctly, requiring repairs.
and
(2) Something was very wrong with Squiggy.

Squiggy and I go way back ever since the weird drowning accident with Lenny some years ago, when I was still just a novice fish owner using a glass bowl rather than a tank. Back then, I didn't know that if you filled the water right up to the top, that you were pretty much screwing your fish out of getting any air. Unfortunately for Lenny, it was a lesson I learned to late. I found him floating the next morning with poor Squiggy gasping for breath at his side. One emergency call to the fish store later, I quickly corrected the problem and Squiggy lived to tell the tale.

Since that fateful day, life has been kind to Squiggy. We bought a one gallon tank, complete with air bubbler and brought them both home to stay, after my boss kindly suggested that everyone else was getting jealous over my having an offish ... (Yeah. That joke was just as bad when I came up with it years ago.)

"Pet's Stacey," he said, "don't belong in the office. If I let you have one, then everybody else is going to want to have one. And then we're going to have a problem because no one is going to know where to draw the line."

I thought about it for a moment, remembering all the office memories of Squiggy and I listening to Dave Matthews, Lenny Kravitz, and Tori Amos and how Squiggy liked Dave the best, often times singing along in his little fishy way, with his mouth puckered up just like ...

Anyway it broke my heart. "Come on Mr. Phelps. Can't you just tell everyone that I'm special and their not?" I whined, pleading with him for leniency. But he simply stood there for a moment, shaking his head back and forth as he is prone to do whenever having a conversation with me and quietly requested once more that Squiggy find himself a new place of residence.

So Squiggy moved into his posh new digs and his new household like he was king of the manor born. He even managed to train KC to feed him on command, just by swimming to the front of his tank and then skinning his lips on the surface. KC however took feeding him to a whole new level, dumping ridiculously large amounts of food into his tank at one time.

"You're giving him too much," I'd tell her. "He's going to die of food consumption."

"Nuh uh. Squiggy likes all the food I give him. See ... Watchem eat," KC would argue. "He's my fish anyway."

And that is how Squiggy went from being a small, tiny little goldfish into the monster he is now, approximately the size of my hand. His growth, of course, upgraded his yugo one gallon tank to a ten gallon country club complete with members. But it wasn't all champagne wishes and caviar dreams. There were a few rough spots on the way.(02-02-2003)

But this morning, things aren't looking quite good for poor Squiggy. His bottom fins are bright red, as if they are engorged with blood from some sort of internal hemorrhaging. Although he appears well, despite occasional rest stops at the bottom of the tank, I fear that this illness just might do him in.

And it breaks my heart, because although I know he's a fish, I've gotten rather attached. Whether it's saying hello to him every morning, or bidding him good evening when it's late at night or just simply pressing my hand against his tank to pet him through the glass, Squiggy is part of the family.

So I'm crossing my fingers that it's not too late for Squiggy to pull through.

Updates to follow later.