Compass & Quill

True story:

I get home from vacation to find that my catfish, Sparky, is terribly bloated, but swimming just fine. Fearing that it must be dropsy, or some other mysterious fish disease, I immediately tested the water. He’s my last surviving fish, and the little bastard has lived through everything (and eaten all the rest of the tank). I have a soft spot in my heart for him since he’s the only one I’ve been able to keep alive over the last year, so it freaked me out that he, too, might be on his way to fishy heaven. As it turns out, the readings were all normal. Nothing wrong, but it was time to add some Nite-Out anyway, so I went ahead and did that, just in case.

Wanting to cover all of my bases, I asked The Man if he happened to see Sparky while I was gone. He replied, “Nope, didn’t pay that much attention to him. Only saw him when I fed him.”

“Oh? You fed him? How much?” I asked. Catfish are notorious for gorging, so I figured maybe he just ate an extra pellet or two and it showed up more than one would imagine.

But The Man answered me: “Only three pellets. Well, actually, I fed him three when you left and three more the day you got back.”

The fish normally gets one pellet A WEEK. Little Mr. Piggy over here looks like he’s about to explode because he gorged himself on six weeks’ worth of food in five days. While I was road tripping, he basically got treated to his own private, no-limits buffet.

No worries – his stomach is far less swollen than yesterday. It ‘s still making me laugh, though! I wonder if that’s what I look like after getting back from a trip to Golden Corral…