A death in the family

I can think of few things that are less pleasant than what I woke up to this morning.

A few months back I posted a short clip which featured the ongoing bizarre behavior of Tess' betta fish Dorothy. Dorothy was in a fish funk and spent the bulk of his time floating leisurely at the top of his bowl for the sole purpose of fooling me into thinking he was dead every day. Following close observation of this phenomenon, it was suggested to me, by a serious and expert fish person that I feed Dorothy cooked peas and then soak him in a gallon of water with two cups of Epsom salts. I did both of these things and like magic Dorothy bounced right back and was perfectly normal for, oh, probably seven or eight days.

Then he decided to go to the opposite extreme and stay only on the bottom of the bowl, not even leaving the depths to partake of the bounty of delicious freeze dried worms I dutifully sprinkled in each day. I comforted myself Dorothy must be eating at some point away from my watchful eye because he was still alive, even though he had progressed from simply sitting on the bottom to actually trying to burrow beneath his decorative bowl balls.

So last night I checked on Tess and I noticed Dorothy going absolutely ballistic in his bowl, literally bouncing on the bottom and careening back to the top to grab a floating worm, like some sort of bizarre reverse fly fisherman. I was pleased. I had grown fond of Dorothy and was happy to see him really living it up.

Then. This morning.

I went over to Tess' dresser to grab her a t-shirt and saw the most horrific thing imaginable. Dorothy had...expired. Rather than simply floating to the top in the peaceful dead fish fashion preferred by gilled creatures the world over, the same pose, in fact, that he had adopted for almost all of his living time on earth, Dorothy had decided to really go out with a bang and...explode.

He was inside out.

Gills all open and fluttering, big bloated fish body turned almost completely opaque, I wanted to vomit right into the bowl, though that would have made the whole thing worse. This was nothing that I needed at seven thirty in the morning. I fled the room and refused to return until Dorothy and my husband went to the toilet together. Even then, I spent all day avoiding the bathroom for fear that Dorothy would wander back up, more swollen and water logged than before, to haunt my dreams my whole life through.

So...RIP Dorothy...and thanks for the memories...especially that last one which will make it impossible for me to eat anything that has been 'butterflied' ever again.