Dr. Forbush Thinks

I woke up early the other morning, went down the stairs and began to take care of some of my usual tasks. I feed the fish, feed the cats, pick up some of the junk lying around from the night before. My wife generally does pretty much the same types of things. I was putting some fish food into one of our aquariums, when I heard a scream from the other side of the room. My wife had discovered a large fish on the floor, lying next to the cat food bowl, nearly six feet away from his fish tank.

The fish in question is a Chinese Loach that my daughter selected at the pet store about eight months earlier. When we purchased the fish it was less than an inch long. It was a cute little scavenger that propped its head up on its fore-fins as it rested on the bottom of the tank. As one who believes in evolution, it is clear that this would be the type of fish species that could evolve lungs and wallow in the mud as a pond or stream gradually dried up. Obviously my particular fish didn’t have the ability to survive out of the water, but maybe a fish species like this one, if exposed to an environment where ponds dried up every year could by natural selection could allow some of its progeny to survive each year if they had something that would allow them to take oxygen out of the air directly. For example, wet gills could allow oxygen to be dissolved in the moisture and absorbed into the blood stream. As long as the fish didn’t dry out it could survive, or maybe not.

Well, I am not in the habit of taking my fish out of the fish tank to see how long they can live out of the water. But, if the fish chooses to do this on his own, I have no control over it.

This cute little fish had grown to over 9 inches long in just eight months. It was now nicknamed “the monster.” It began to eat the smaller fish in the community tank, so we had no choice but to put the fish in solitary confinement, in his own tank. His tank sat on a short table, and the top of the tank was less than three feet above the ground.

But, how did the fish get out of the water?

Our first guess had to do with the cats. We had already lost a large angel fish to the cats. The evidence was obvious, because of the cat scratches on the outside of the dead fish. But, as I bent down to pick up the fish, lying on the floor I didn’t see any scratches. The cat obviously couldn’t get the fish out of the water without using its claws in one way or another. This fish must have been suicidal.

The fish was lying on the floor perfectly still. I picked it up with a paper towel, with the intention of throwing it into the trash. It seemed a bit to big to flush down the toilet. I couldn’t imagine that my daughter would actually bury a fish, since we have been through so many over the years. Ten years ago each of our fish had had names, but now we just have a collection of fish.

I began to examine the fish, just to be sure that the cat had not clawed it, and I had just missed the marks. Then I thought that I saw it move. Surely it was my imagination. I told my wife that I thought that it might still be alive. “It won’t live long, if it is” she said. I didn’t know for sure, so I thought that I would put it back into the fish tank. Sure enough, when I put the fish back into its tank it moved around a little, but it rested in the floating plants at the top of the tank. This was certainly not ordinary behavior for a fish that spent most of his life sitting on the bottom of the tank. I didn’t hold out much hope for his survival.

I told my daughter about our discovery. I told her that the fish was still alive, but just barely.

When I came home from work in the evening I saw that the fish was still hiding in the weeds. He had now grown a thin white coating over his body. The coating seemed particularly thick around his head. He was just lying in the weeds barely moving. If I didn’t know that he was still alive I might have guessed that he was dead.

After about a week the fuzz came off his body and he felt healthy enough to sit around on the bottom of the tank again. And, now more than a month later he seems to be as good as new.

Apparently, the fish was tired of being in solitary confinement, and he just had to get out. He must have pushed himself against the lid on the top of the tank and push himself out of the tank. He then must have fallen to the tabletop, wiggled himself off the table and onto the floor. Then once on the floor he continued to wiggle his way in the direction of the door to the outside. We found him up against the door, so who knows how far he would have gone if he had been able to open the door.





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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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