I Saved a Shark's LIfe

It was a dark and stormy night... No, not really, but it was dark outside and I did have the TV's volume up a good notch while I sat on the couch and edited pictures on the computer. The dogs were asleep, Charlie on the other end of the couch and Rufus presumably on my bed.

Then I hear it... beep. Huh, what?

A few moments later ... beep.

Great. One of the smoke detectors is giving off it's low battery beep.

Beep.

I let it beep a few more times before finally getting my fat butt off the couch and figuring out which one is beeping and as it turned out it's the one in my roommate's bedroom.

Fantastic. She's out of town and now I have to go into her room and change out her smoke detector battery before I go to bed as the beep, as quiet as it is, is indeed loud enough to keep me awake at night. Especially with her bedroom door open and mine as well (since she's out of town)

I find a 9volt battery in a drawer and set it on the counter waiting for the DVD I was watching to finish. Yes, I could have paused it, but why? The beep was annoying, not super loud.

Suddenly, out of the blue a hear something move in the kitchen. I mean a real movement, not just a normal kitchen noise like the ice maker turning on or a drip, drip, dripping from the faucet or something else common place. Whatever it was that I heard was loud enough to wake both dogs and even cause Rufus to come out of my bedroom to see what was happening.

The first thing I did was send a chat message to my roommate who's out of town, letting her know that there's a weird noise in the kitchen. It's a running joke in the house that we have a ghost living here and anytime there's a weird noise or a flickering light bulb we jokingly blame it on the imaginary ghost.

"Something in the kitchen just moved and it's own. I mean, Charlie jumped and Rufus came of the room to see what the noise was." ~ Me, 18:50

She replied with a joke about the 'demon' doing dishes for us.

When the movie was finally over I set the laptop down and head over towards her bedroom, grabbing the battery along the way.  I step into her room, turn off the ceiling fan and look at the alarm. It should be easy enough to change the battery and I step back into the dining room to grab a chair real quick. As I step up to the table I see what looks like a fish shaped dog toy on the ground underneath the chair I'm about to pull away.

Fish Out of Water

That's weird, the toy didn't look familiar. I look again and see that it's not actually a toy, it's one of the two sharks in the fish tank. You see, right there on the bar between the kitchen and the dining room my roommate placed a fish tank a few years ago. It's still there. A year ago, or so, one of the silver dollar fish jumped out and landed on the kitchen counter, suffocating slowly until it was found hours later by my roommate.

This time, however, the fish made it from about 5 feet high (the top of the tank) and onto the floor, probably bouncing off the table or the chair on it's way down to land where it did. If that was the noise I heard earlier, then that means it's been out of the tank for at least an hour.

I reach down to pick it up only to have to swat Rufus away in the process to prevent him from treating it like a snack. As soon as I touch the 6 inch shark it jumped.

Was that a death throe? A spasm? Nerves reacting?

I reach for the fish again and this time it doesn't move. It's eyes aren't moving, it's gills aren't moving and it's dry. Limp, but dry.

As I walk it around to the garbage can I pull out my cell phone and call my roommate to let her know her black shark is dead. The other end rings as I step on the lever that opens the can's lid and she answers as I'm about to drop the shark. I stop and explain what happened, "Remember when I sent you that message about a noise in the kitchen? Well, I figured out it was your shark. Somehow it jumped out of the tank and landed underneath the table."

She's not happy and I'm about to drop the shark when it starts squirming and slips out of my hand falling straight into the garbage can, sliding between a couple of things and down into the bag. Crap.

"Well, I thought it was dead, but it just moved and fell into the can," I explained the current situation.

"Can you get it out and put it in water?"

"Maybe. It slipped down into the can."

I had to fish around (he he, see what I did there?) up to my elbow, until I was able to grab the shark and pull it out of the garbage can. The shark's skin was covered in garbage, dog fur and other things I didn't want coming off in the fish tank so I quickly filled a Big Gulp cup I normally use for filling the dogs' water bowl and set the shark in there to rinse of for a few minutes.Without a lot of room to move, the shark sat there, face down, as the dog fur and a piece of lettuce separated from his skin. When I deemed him clean enough I dumped most of the dirty water out into the sink and then slid the shark out into the aquarium.

It sank. To the bottom. Like a rock. A real rock, not a Chevy truck, although I'm sure a Chevy truck would sink to the bottom as well.

For a second I thought it really was dead and I was just dealing with nerve system reactions when I noticed it's gills were moving. And then an eye. I watched for a few moments more and then the shark shook. It was upside down at this point, but moving. I thought about reaching in and adjusting his body right-side up, but before I could his whole body shifted like a shark does when it's swimming. It was still upside down, but it was moving. And then it righted itself.

Nemo Was a Sissy

This entire time I'm giving a verbal account to my roommate over the phone (hence the lack of pictures) and she let's me know she'd be surprised if the shark lasted through the night.

The shark swam around the tank a couple of times, still a little dirty from the adventure in the garbage can, and I leave to replace the 9volt in my roommate's bedroom.

A few hours later I check on it before heading off to bed and it seems fine. The following morning it was swimming around like nothing was wrong.

Amazing.

Black Shark Swimming with Albino Shark, the Next Day