Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Life is Stranger than Fiction, and involves fish

On our way to the bus stop this morning, Carrie and I notice a plastic bag sitting in the driveway. My mind goes immediately to the children's book Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out! It's written by April Pulley Sayre and beautifully illustrated by Annie Patterson.

In it, a baby turtle hatches, escapes the dangers on the beach, makes it into the relative safety of the waters, and is rescued more than once by well-meaning human beings. On one occasion, she is tempted to eat a tasty jellyfish which turns out to be a plastic bag. The bag is yanked out of the water before she can eat it, not knowing it could choke her or clog in her stomach.

So I say, "huh. Jellyfish."

Carrie smiles and picks up the bag, narrowly missing being squirted by the water inside. I tell her to be careful as she's dumping it out (who wants to start the day with wet tennis shoes?), and then I hear her exclaim, "Mama! There's a goldfish in here!"

Sure enough, there IS a goldfish, a for-real, live goldfish in this bag of now-nearly-no-water. I tell her to set it down while there's still some water in there and she, now wide awake, exhorts me to go put said goldfish into our "pond".

So here I go, lowering plastic baggie into the water for a few seconds to let more water in while poor little fishie gets somewhat acclimated to water that is full of dead mosquitoes, dead leaves, quite alive frogs, and goodness knows what else.

By the time the boys head out to the bus and stop to hunt for Mr. Fishie, he's either hiding somewhere, been eaten by a frog (is that possible?), or sucked up against one of the pump vents. What he is not is floating belly up. I warned Carrie he may not even survive until afternoon because of shock.

Dada says he's heard of finding cats and dogs in the driveway... but fish? Who does that!?

No comments: