White Water: In Memory of Max

When I took this picture this morning I had no idea it would be for this purpose, but when I got home tonight I found poor Max, the rescue beta (blipped on 9/5), unresponsive on the bottom of his little tank. This was no surprise because I’d been watching Max’s slow decline for several weeks. He was not doing well when my daughter rescued him from a less than nurturing home, so we medicated him, bought him a little tank and supplemented his diet with all the things recommended to get him better and pampered him as best we could. He never seemed to totally recover and then he developed a tumor of some sort which had grown considerably in the past few weeks and had pretty much taken him over.

Yesterday after work I stopped at the local fish store and spoke to a very helpful young lady who seemed to know a lot about betas. She gave me some blood worms to tempt him with and when I told her that I hated to see him “suffering”, although I don’t know that he was, I wondered what I could do to help him. Not much she said, but if I wanted to help him on his way to fish heaven I could put him in a small container and add two or three drops of oil of cloves and that would do the trick. I'm not sure I could have done that, but it was good information to have.

He wasn’t looking good at all this morning, and in fact I’m not sure he wasn’t dead then but he had moved from the spot he was in when I went to bed and while I wasn’t encouraged that he was getting better, I thought he was still alive but alas, no. Sometime during the day he moved on to greater things, and I like to think his little beta spirit is happily cascading down Whatcom Creek in the white water, swimming with the big boys.

Tomorrow morning on my way to work I'm going to stop at the creek and ceremoniously consign Max's little body to the spot where I took this picture. I think he'd be thrilled. Swim on Max.