the good news cafe

I do. I experienced a minor one just this morning :) Oh, I know it's a small matter, and there is probably a logical explanation for it, but the whole thing was still amazing to me! The incident involved one of our betta fish--a beautiful, deep blue little fellow. His tank was kept atop another betta tank (the tanks are made to be stacked) on one of the bathroom counters. Our indoor cat, Charlie, largely hangs out in the adjoining bedroom but had previously shown little interest in the fish. And perhaps Charlie was not the culprit--we'll never know! We do have to unstack the tanks to feed the fish at night, and maybe they were not stacked securely...or maybe Charlie did decide to paw at the fish....

Suffice it to say that when I got up this morning and went in the bathroom to get something, I was greeted by a sad scene--the top tank had been overturned and the blue betta was no where to be seen :( My initial thought was that the poor thing was surely dead--either having been eaten by Charlie or simply due to the fact that he wasn't in water for who knows how long. I figured if the tank had just been overturned, I would see the fish struggling/moving...I looked all about and saw nothing. Feeling a little bummed, I decided to go have breakfast and coffee before cleaning things up. It ended up being about two hours later that I returned to clean up the mess. Most of the water was in one area and I put a towel over that...in a different area the floor was moist, but there wasn't water to speak of--there was a can of Lysol on the floor there, and when I picked it up, lo and behold, there was the corpse of the blue betta--or so I thought.  I got a tissue and bent to pick him up, apologizing to him for his fate...and was startled when he jumped! Yikes! I quickly uprighted his tank which still had a little water in it, scooped up the fish and put him in it! I treated and added water and amazingly enough, he seems fine! 

The poor thing was out of his tank for some unknown amount of time, (my son said he heard a crash in the night--it was still dark--but just thought Charlie had knocked something down, and fell rapidly back to sleep) but at least the two hours between my discovering his tank and coming to clean it up!!  I'd guess it was easily four or more hours. Now bettas are able to breathe air--this I knew.  That's how they are able to live in small tanks without aeration (or in bogs in the wild). But still, they do need water and this little guy had been on the floor for a long time with very little water--practically no water! It really felt like he had died (my initial reaction to the scene and absence of a body) and come back to life.  It was quite a thrill :) 

We renamed the little guy Lazarus :) We also relocated his tank so it's no longer stacked, and Charlie no longer has access to it :)  

 ** the tank is low on gravel and not "arranged" because I felt Lazarus needed to be left alone for a few days after his traumatic experience--much of the gravel was still on the floor when I found him :)