Well here's finally the story about Alex's baby/fish sitting adventures. Or should I say poor Nemo's adventures on having Alex babysit him! This all started last Thursday night while I was sleeping on the couch in the evening before work, and Derek was taking an evening nap as well. Earlier on in the evening, Alex had gotten into the bedroom by using a broom handle to uncatch the hook on the door, and the knob wasn't locked. He had pulled out Daddy's pool cue, but luckily couldn't manage the combination lock on the case! He also tried some baking, evidenced by the coating of flour over the entire kitchen!
I was running a little late for work {as usual!} and was in my bedroom getting changed and stuff when I turned around to look at Nemo. I was horrified by what I saw! The entire top half of the tank was like steel wool or something! What the hell was in there??? An entire can of bloodworms I discovered a little later. The water was also quite red, so I suspect a candy fish or two made it in there, although it may have also just been from the worms. And as if that wasn't enough, when I had gotten enough of the food out so that I could actually *find* Nemo in there, the air pump was foaming... I don't *want* to know what he put in there for that effect. My simple explanation for Alex's ideas was this... he gave Nemo his dinner {the bloodworms}, he got dessert afterwards {the candy fish}, and after dinner is bath time {whatever the bubbles were!}. As if that wasn't enough shock for that poor little fish, our reserved fishtank water was at least 5 degrees cooler than his tank was because our furnace wasn't working that night. He spent the night in a Tupperware bowl and even that had a ton of food in it just from what was sticking to the net when I caught him.
The next morning at work I was scared that I was going to come home to perform my first fish funeral. I took a good long look in the pet department at stuff. I bought more bloodworms {as that's all the others will eat willingly}, and was looking at the various tank toys and aquarium kits. There wasn't anything there that really appealed to me. I know what the prices are for kits over at Petcetera, and decided that I'd be better off hoping for a sale there, than my discount at work. I really want to get a larger tank, and was looking long and hard at the 10 and 20 gallon starter kits. I was also hoping to find a small betta tank like Dory's in a different colour. I figgered that if I was ever gonna get away with talking Derek into getting a Marlin and/or a Bruce, this was the perfect time. I came away quite discouraged, depressed, and basically empty-handed... hoping that I could get Derek to take me to Petcetera maybe on Friday, or more likely on Saturday after he finished work.
Well much to my {pleasant} surprise, Nemo was still alive when I got home. His movements were a little sluggish, but he seemed happy to see me. It took me over an hour to clean out his tank. As it was, when I was putting some water in to arrange the gravel a bit better on the bottom, you could still see the worms floating around a bit... I guess I wasn't able to completely get it all off of it. I changed a few of his plants and got him back into his refurbished home!
Well it's been nearly a week now since his Alex fiasco, and he's healthier than ever. If any of our fish deserve the name Nemo, it's him! He's gone through having his back scraped up, all healed, but I've noticed that there *is* a scar after all; made it out of the algae from hell; and now survived Alex's babysitting. He's definitely one tough fish!
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