Fish Stories

The following is a true story which actually happened to a friend of mine from work. His name is Darryl, but I call him by his nickname, Doc. Mayhaps one day soon, he will attend a DCAS meeting and you can meet him for yourself. After hearing of his story, I asked Doc to ‘put it in writing’, but being too busy, he asked me to write it for him. At any rate, here is his unusual (to say the least) funny fish story – as related to me.

This story begins on a disastrous note, just like many others out there. It all started with the recent hurricane which tore through our area causing a tremendous amount of flooding. Doc had a nice 55-gallon aquarium setup in his basement which contained several of the larger Chiclid family members. At least it was nice until the hurricane arrived. Living with Darby Creek defining his backyard property line, Doc’s house was completely under water after the hurricane moved out of the area. Several days later, after the water had receded, Doc and his family could finally get back into the neighborhood to view the damage. All of his Chiclids had escaped and swam away with but one exception – a Jack Dempsy whom Doc’s daughter has affectionately named “Jack”. Still unable to move back into the house, Doc simply threw Jack back into the 55-gallon aquarium which was filled with good and clean, excuse me – I just coughed, Darby Creek water. Some time later, having finally rec eived approval to move back into his house, Doc was surprised to find Jack still alive. Doc worked hard to change the water, filtration, etc., and in due time, everything was almost back to normal in the aquarium – the only difference being that now there was only Jack in the aquarium.

Jack had lots of visitors who said hello to him daily. Various contractors were always walking about as they repaired walls, ceilings, etc., and they all got to know Jack on a personal basis. Eventually, the basement was completely restored with but one exception – new carpeting. In arranging for a carpet layer to install the new carpeting, Doc was told the job would take a day to complete and everything had to be removed from the room. That was not a problem for Doc because none of the home furnishings in the basement had been replaced yet. However, Jack and his aquarium had to be moved. Doc proceeded to tear down the 55-gallon aquarium and move it into another room – out of the way of the carpet layer. For the one-day’s time period the job was supposed to have taken, Doc decided to put Jack into a large bucket.

Well the carpet layer arrived and began his work. During the day he was introduced to Jack and every time he walked passed the bucket, he would look in, wave, and say hi to Jack. To Doc’s dismay, the job was not completed in the 1 day timeframe as promised and the contractor had to return the next day, which ultimately meant that Jack had to live a second day in his bucket. The next day, the contractor returned to finish laying the carpets. When he went down the basement, the first thing he did was walk passed Jack’s bucket. Jack was laying on his side just barely moving. He immediately called Doc who came running down to the basement. Doc decided that an airline would help so off he ran to get an air pump. In the meantime, the contractor said he was going to catch Jack and give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Doc didn’t think too much about it, assuming the contractor was joking. To Doc’s surprise, sure enough when he returned, the carpet layer was giving Jack mo uth-to-mouth. Doc arrived just in time to see Jack take a chunk out of the carpet layer’s lip. The carpet layers lip was bleeding pretty good and Jack had the contractor’s blood smeared around his own lips. The contractor was upset and was taken back that this fish actually bit him. Poor Doc was amazed that the contractor was foolish enough to even attempt giving mouth-to-mouth to a fish. It wasn’t funny at the time, however in retrospect it certainly is!

In conclusion . . . . .
Do not attempt to ever give a fish mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. If fish could simply inhale air like you and I, it would not live in water nor have gills to absorb air out the water in the first place, but rather it would be living out of the water. By the way, in answer to the question ‘Is Human Blood Nutritious’, the answer is a big NO – not if you are a fish. I’d tell you to just ask Jack, unfortunately, Jack died a few short hours after consuming his mouthful of the carpet layer’s human blood!

Ed from Almost Natural Tropical Fish Foods