Bait’s bowl needed cleaning. The water had gotten quite cloudy and it was time to fix him all up with clean water and rocks. I had put it off because I really get disgusted at the smell of his nasty water when I’m cleaning it all up. Plus, I see little bits of stuff floating in his water that I can only assume are excrements and that totally grosses me out!

This was Elyssa’s birthday present from a good friend (I won’t name names!), but somehow I have inherited the job of feeding Bait and keeping the bowl clean. By the way, don’t you just love the fish’s name? Mark planted the suggestion of “Bait” and the girls picked it up. I would’ve rather the fish had a normal name like Norm or Roger, but I lost out to “Bait.” The poor fish already sounds like a goner with a name like that!

I was trying to take the easy way of cleaning Bait’s bowl this morning. Instead of taking him out of the bowl, I left him in and would put the bowl under the kitchen sink faucet allowing water to fill up the bowl. I’d pour some water out making sure that Bait didn’t fall out of the bowl. I continued doing this over and over and noticed that the water was getting cleaner. All was going well with this process until Bait got a little too close to the edge of the bowl. It was like it all happened in slow motion. Bait poured out of the bowl with the rest of the water and filth and landed directly in the garbage disposal! I screamed out loud! The girls watched the whole thing happen and they were in a panic, too. My next thoughts were, “What do I do now? How do I get Bait out of there? If I cannot get him out or if he dies am I supposed to just grind him up in the garbage disposal?? I couldn’t bare the thought of having to do that! So, with a quick reaction, I grabbed some tongs out of my utensil drawer and began to try to “fish” Bait out of the garbage disposal. The poor guy kept flopping around and it was difficult to grab hold of him. Finally, I was able to get him out and plopped him into a glass of water I had poured for him to rest in until his bowl was clean. I breathed a sigh of relief, but noticed that Bait didn’t seem quite the same. At this point, I’m not sure that anything happened to Bait. I didn’t see him bleeding (I don’t know what fish blood looks like!), but he seems traumatized for sure! I wonder why?? I’m not sure if he’ll make it or not, but at least he now has a nice clean bowl to either live or die in.

Hopefully, Bait will pull through this terrible experience! I know one thing … I’ll always take him out of his bowl FIRST when cleaning it in the future!!