Ode to Olaf

I dropped my fish. It happened on Sunday while we were cleaning out the fish tank. I was trying to put him in a bowl and he was flopping around and fell on the floor. We don't have carpet. I scooped him up and put him in the bowl so he wouldn't suffocate, but honestly, it probably would have been better if he had. Because when I got him into the bowl, he had little bruises on his poor head and also internal bleeding. A big red circle on his head. I looked at him and I felt like I had physically beaten him up. On purpose. I felt awful. Did I mention he is albino? That is how I could tell he had internal bleeding. He seemed a little dazed but wasn't really showing any adverse reactions. We hurriedly cleaned the tank so that we could get him back in his home and proceeded to check on him a hundred times that night. He would occasionally swim around as if he were berserk, as was his habit (hence the name Olaf) and then settle back down in a corner.

Monday morning when I fed our other fish, Gina, I checked on him. Still alive but now his left eye was totally red like it was filled with blood. Monday evening when I came home from work I checked on him again and he was still holding his own, hanging out in his corner. I made him a cheerful sign telling him to get better soon and hung it over the fish tank. I joined an MSN group called "Fish Help" but did not recieve any helpful advice from fellow fish droppers. Super.

Tuesday morning, he looked the same, maybe a little wobbly. I started getting concerned that he wasn't eating. He eats the algae on the floor of the tank, running around like a little vacuum cleaner, but since he wasn't vacuuming I didn't think he was getting any nutrition. So I dropped this huge tablet that is supposed to be tasty to nocturnal vacuum cleaners and turned off the light, but he didn't even look at it. I guess because he was maybe blind in that eye. I checked on him after work and he admitedly looked a little worse. Still, when we came home from Baxter's parents house last night I was shocked to find him laying on his side with labored breathing. Every once in a while we would swim around all crazily, swiriling around upside down and then landing on his side. I watched him struggle to breathe and prepared myself for his passing. I checked on him again, and he wasn't breathing. I didn't want to flush him but was scared to leave him in the tank with Gina until I could bury him. She is a big eater and so I feared she would start in on him.

Telling myself that burial is more for the benefit of the living than for the dead, I scooped him up with the net and put him in a little tupperware container. It occured to me that if we had used the tupperware container instead of the little bowl I might not have dropped Olaf. I put the thought out of my head immediately, but then Baxter said it out loud. Fantastic. We flushed him down the toilet to the sounds of "With or without you" by U2. Totally accidental and very upsetting.

I think the hardest part is that he was such a cool fish. He just liked to swim around, minding his own business, cleaning up the tank. He put up a good fight for those two days, a real good fight. Now I think he was right to put up such a fight on Sunday when I was chasing him around the tank with the net. Maybe he knew something that we didn't.

I don't know if I would have felt that bad if it had been Gina that I dropped. She is sort of an evil bitch and will probably outlive my children. We have started withdrawing from her, telling her that we hate her as we walk by the tank. I think that is wrong, but perhaps we are just dealing with our grief in our own way and will warm up to her soon. I think she may be in mourning too, so I am trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. We'll see.

Rest In Peace
OLAF