i killed mao

First, I'd like to note that neither of the people who own the fish are Chairman Mao enthusiasts.

Now, for my story:

A week ago two people who own a tiny fish asked me to care for it. The fish's name is Chairman Mao. I believe it started out as a joke, and then the name stuck. He is about 1" long and thinner than a pencil, he is orange-yellow, and has a little bump or curve in the middle of his belly area. Not sure what happened there, but he seems fine and swims around dabbling in new swim techniques and waiting for food from on high.

Anyway, Chairman Mao's fish-parents were leaving for nearly a month, and rather than ask me to drop by their house every few days, they suggested I drive the fish and his bowl to my house and care for him there. It sounded easy enough, and he was an active, fun sort of fish, so I said, "Sure, no problem, sounds great!"

Stupid me.

I got him home, and he was a little worn out after the 1 1/2 hour ride (it turned out we had to drive one of the fish-parents to the airport with the fish in tow), but he was swimming around and seemed curious about his new surroundings.

The next day I woke up and went to check on him. He was no longer swimming around up top, but down amongst the rocks and was actually bumping his head into the bottom of the tank. And, he was also no longer only slightly curved. He looked like a zigzag.

I moved him into a warmer room, and fed him a little.

A week passed, he kept acting more and more strangely, finally digging himself in between the rocks into the narrowest gap he could find. And when I came home yesterday, Chairman Mao had died. He had squeezed himself in so tight! I watched him up close for a couple of minutes to see if I could catch a glimpse of his little fish lips opening and closing, but no. He was gone.

I'm going to go ahead and say he was not well to begin with. I mean, what kind of fish swims around with a curve in his belly? And slams his head into the bottom of his fish bowl? Was he trying to go up and got confused?

I feel bad, but I did give him a nice little memorial service as I put him in the compost crock on top of some old strawberries and a slice of lemon. At least he went out with some fruit.