Tragedy

Today I had a tragedy occur. To explain, I must back track to last Tuesday. When I got home from my interview, I found one of my fish (Banded Leporinus...vertically striped black and yellow fish about 6 inches long) had gotten stuck in one of his rocks. He thought he was small enough to fit through the hole, but only his head to his gills and one of his front fins made it. I tried to push him out, but his scales and gills wouldn't allow it. I ended up calling multiple vets trying to get their advice on what to do, and finally decided to take him and the rock, put him in a separate bucket with aquarium water, and go to work. I took my drill and very small bits, and drilled onto the rock. After losing two drill bits (they broke in half after a few tries), I finally made enough holes to stress the rock. I then got out some cutting pliers and pressed the rock in enough places that it broke off allowing the fish to be released. I was ecstatic I saved him, but he was really battered and bruised from trying to release himself for several hours prior to me getting home. I talked to an aquatic vet and he told me to separate him and put in some over the counter antibiotics and artificial slime coat to the water over the course of a week or so in hopes that his wounds would heal without becoming infected. I did this with an air stone, but had concerns since I didn't have a filter in the bucket. After a couple days, the water in the bucket started becoming cloudy, but I didn't think too much of it. This morning, I picked up his rock that I had for him to hide in, and he was upside down. I feel so bad for the little guy. He went through so much only to die anyways. His wounds looks pretty pussy and all I hope is that he died of his wounds and not because I didn't have a filter in his bucket. Unfortunately, it could be a combination of the two since he was already stressed and I had him in a place where the bacterial levels were probably elevated over the big tank. I feel really guilty. I need a quarantine tank so if a fish needs to be separated in the future, he'll have a place that has a heater and a filter and has a better chance of survival. I just hope I did all I could and that he didn't suffer too much. I currently have him in the garbage, but I'm starting to feel guilty about that too so I think I may have to fish him out (pardon the pun) and bury him in the back yard somewhere.

Besides this sad occurrence today, the rest of the weekend was fun. On Saturday I began volunteering for Fancy Cats Rescue. I am now the Saturday morning girl who goes to Petsmart and takes care of the kitties up for adoption there. They have some amazing cats that need homes. My favorite so far is Molly. She is an over-weight calico that loves to be held and petted and will lick your face while you hold her. She's great and deserves an equally great home.

On Saturday night, Mike and I met the rest of the volunteers at TGI Fridays for a gathering. It was nice meeting some like minded people, but I probably would only get along with one of them on a constant basis. Some of them are just slightly over the top about their cats and that was all they could talk about.

I also started feeding a couple feral colonies out here in Springfield over the weekend. I'm going to be feeding them Tuesday through Friday. So, I now have responsibilities again which is nice.

Yesterday the weather was beautiful so Mike and I took a walk to a nearby park, Lake Accotink. There is the start of this trail right in our neighborhood. Well, the hike around the lake was supposed to be 3.4 miles around. We started walking on it at 3pm. It kept going and going and going. By 4pm and no lake in sight anymore, we decided to ask some passersby where we were. Apparently we had gotten on a wrong trail somewhere and had to turn around. We kept walking and walking and finally ended up at a neighborhood. We asked a man with his bike how to get back to the lake and kept walking. We finally made our way back to our original trail and we made it home by 5pm. What was meant to be a casual hour long stroll ended up being a more than 6 mile hike around to nowhere. We found out that the trail we were on was the Fairfax County Connector Trail and goes for many, many miles. I'm not even sure where it starts or stops but we know we could have walked to the Vienna metro stop in Fairfax, VA which would take us about 30 minutes or more to drive to.

Anyways, we were exhausted by the end of the night. I would have slept well had it not been for Stumpey taking up half of the bed, Sabrina taking up the foot of the bed, my husband complaining about being cold and me burning up smashed in the middle of it all! But I survived and now have Skye sleeping beside me on the couch. Life is good. Now I must go bury my fish.