Quicky's Redemption

Major drama today. I was cleaning the kitchen and getting ready for dinner this evening and I decided that poor Quicky needed clean water. I didn't mention this out loud as the last few times Isabelle has wanted to 'help'. It makes things much harder when you are changing the water so I kept my mouth shut.

Things started smoothly. I transfered Quicky (yes...Isabelle named him) along with some very yucky water to another container and cleaned his tank and the rocks and plant in it. I filled the tank with clean water and put the water conditioner in. Then I got water started for spaghetti and continued tidying up the kitchen. When I thought that the clean water was at room temperature and Quicky would not go into shock I decided to put him into his freshly cleaned tank. This is when the drama truely began.

I emptied most of the gross yucky water into the sink and a horrible thought crossed my mind...what would happen if Quicky decided not to cooperate and he started flipping around? I shoudl really be doing this with the sink plugged. Stupid me didn't stop and plug the sink and wouldn't you know it, the darn fish started flipping around and he flipped out of my hand and down the drain!!!! I gasped in horror. Isabelle popped up and asked me what was wrong.

At this point I had my hand in the garbage disposal as far as it would go trying to find the darn fish. Izzy walked around the corner into the kitchen and saw me with my hand in the sink, looking frantic. After searching through the muck I finally gave up and told her that Quicky was in the sewer and he was finding new friends.

She totally freaked! She started crying and wailing and asked me what happened. I explained what had happened and she said that she wanted to talk to Daddy. NOW! I was trying to calm her down, she was almost hysterical at this point, so I grabbed the phone and using the speed dial called Thomas. Isabelle said that she wanted to tell him what happened so I put her on the phone. Of course he couldn't understand what she was saying because she was frantic. I took the phone and explained what had happened. He didn't quite know what to say. I gave the phone back to Isabelle planning our trip to Pet Smart to replace the fish.

I started to put the tank away and picked up the sponge that had been left on the counter and was about to put it back into the sponge basket that is on the side of my sink. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something strange in the basket and decided (thank God) to take the couple of seconds to see what it was. It was Quicky!!!! I grabbed that basket off of the sink and screamed, "It's Quicky!!!! He's here. I found him." I dumped him back into his tank and low and behold the darn fish started swimming around glad to be in the water again.

I have no idea how he lasted that long. The whole situation couldn't have takend longer then 3 minutes, but man, how long can a fish out of water last??? I'm still wondering if he will make it through the night. He is a fish with 9 lives.

By the way...Izzy took that picture of Quicky. :)