Today was my day
off..sort of. It has turned out to be more “off-day” than ”day off”.
Rising slightly later
than is my normal habit, I was taking my time, briefly tuning in to the
breakfast news, when I happened to walk past the fish tank.
I am not a great lover
of fish tanks, I have to say. However, when we bought our current abode, the previous
owners had made some structural changes to the house. Among them was the
removal of a wall to open up what had once been a corridor running almost the
length of the house. This has made the
living room much larger, but has resulted in what was once an enclosed corridor
becoming an open corridor, with a floor level much lower than that of the
living room itself. In order to prevent the unsuspecting from hurling
themselves over the precipice from the living room into the corridor, they
erected a sort of planter, which for many years was filled with plants, for
that was its purpose.
As time passed, and
planters became increasingly associated with open-plan offices, TH and I
deliberated what to do with this unwanted “feature”, which cannot be removed without
a great deal of effort and upheaval. Eventually, we decided that we could sit a
fish tank on top of it, which would divide the room a little, and sort of look
as though it was meant to be there: which it does. However, in order to cover
the offending planter in its entirety, we had to buy a rather large fish tank.
It takes 300 litres of one of our scarcest commodities, and requires quite a
few fish and plants to keep it looking as it should.
And so, this morning,
as I strolled towards the kitchen, I noticed that it looked for all the world
as if the fish had also decided to have a lie-in. They were all at the bottom
of the tank, not moving much. I then noticed that one of my kissing gourami – a
large fish, as it has been with us for several years – was lying on its side
and looking quite unhappy.
I rushed round to the
other side of the tank, where the thermometer caught my eye, and realised that
the thermostat had gone haywire, and was slowly heating up the tank into 300
litres of bouillabaisse…..
Having rushed to the
kitchen and found a bowl, I scooped the gourami into it and ran back to the sink,
where I added some cool water. The fish, obviously unaware that I was trying to
save its life, perked up a bit and started trying to leave the bowl by the
nearest exit, so I clamped a plate on top. I know it’s only a fish, and
therefore not able to think rationally, but I wasn’t going to have it commit
suicide in the kitchen sink after I’d gone to the trouble to save its life! There
then followed a good hour of me shuttling back and forth with bowls of water,
as I ladled the hot water from the tank and replaced it with cold water.
Having reduced the
temperature (it took about an hour of ladling and replacing) to something
closer to normal, I returned to the kitchen and lifted the plate, to find the
gourami had made a full recovery, so I released him back into the tank. He’s
now swimming happily around with his fishy chums. Hopefully there won’t be any
lasting after-effects!
Hello:
ReplyDeleteWhat a very alarming experience! We are not, we are afraid to say, very fond of fish, other than on a plate, cooked, and in readiness to be eaten, and so would have been totally at a loss as to what to do. But please do not pass this on to your pets who, we trust, are now enjoying cooler waters.
I'll allow them to remain in blissful ignorance, Jane and Lance! I can admit within the confines of the internet that I don't like fish much, either, unless in their natural habitat or a nice beurre blanc, but the fish tank was the lesser of two evils. A friend in Thailand informed me earlier today that gourami are something of a delicacy in Thailand, where he lives. Somehow, I can't see myself eating the family pets, though. Time has led me to develop an attachment to them, even though it's not a real fondness!
ReplyDeleteGood job Mr. Fly is not here to read this......he would have been hyperventilating! He loves fish, both to watch and to eat.
ReplyDeleteWe keep tilapia in large tanks fed from the spring up on the mountain and 'lost' about eighty kilos of the things when the spring had a rush of geothermic blood to the head one night.
Mr. Fly's squawks of alarm on inspecting the tank and finding them floating on the surface outdid the local howler monkeys by a long chalk.
When I say lost, I mean that eighty kilos of tilapia turned up in the kitchen for cleaning, scaling and freezing....
The spring went back to normal and the survivors carried on regardless.
I thought suicidal differences in floor levels were a speciality of the French rural house designer...
Ah, but there you go, Fly: Tilapia are, at least, "dual purpose" fish. You can watch them AND eat them. Despite the assurances of my friend in Thailand, I can work up no enthusiasm for turning my gourami into a Thai-inspired whitebait-type dish.
DeleteMy entire living room is a sort of large podium. I'm not really selling this to you, am I? Suffice to say, we bought this house from an architect/interior designer.
Crikey, thank goodness it was your day off, CB! I shudder to think what you would have found if you'd been out all day.
ReplyDeleteI'm another who isn't terribly fond of watching fish indoors, though they can be soothing at the dentist's. :-) DH is the fish-lover in our household, but I did used to joy watching the golden orfe in our little garden fishpond until the local heron decided it felt like a takeaway!
We had our garden pond raided by a heron, Perpetua. And, of course, the cat regards the indoor fish tank as his personal TV. The fish seem to have survived, so far, but as you say, it's lucky I was around to notice their distress!
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