Charlie, my Betta fish whom I acquired back in August, is no more.
When I headed up to Charlottesville last month, I drove with my sister, since my Volvo was crunched. (Incidentally, I went to court about that in Salem on Tuesday. The judge saw that it was plain that this was a simple accident about which I felt badly, and which inflicted virtually no damage on the vehicle with which I collided, so I paid a $30 fine for improper driving, and that was that.) The blower in Jill’s car wasn’t working, such that neither heat nor cold could come out of the climate control system. This was a problem, since that it was snowing at a decent clip. I had put Charlie in Tupperware for the trip north, and I carried him in my lap to keep him warm while I wiped the foggy windshield clean with a t-shirt every few minutes. It couldn’t have been more than about 40°F in the car, though, and soon the little guy was looking a bit lethargic. Not sure of what to do, Jill volunteered a couple of chemical hand warmers. That seemed like just the thing, so I stuck them to the bottom of the container. They didn’t produce a whole lot of heat, but he didn’t look so bad after a bit.
When we got to my folks’ place in Charlottesville, I quickly transferred him to his bowl, at which time I discovered that the warmers had thrown all of their heat upwards, into the water, which had become really quite warm. Charlie was looking right rough by then. A couple of days later, he died. I tossed his little carcass into the lake, such that he could be eaten by something bigger and hardier than he had been.
I think I’ll get a geranium next.