One of our pets has gone missing. Quasi, short for Quasimodo, named for his rather misshapen physique, is an ugly googly eyed black goldfish, although he does (did) have a rather lovely swishy long tail. You’d think there aren’t many places a goldfish could wander off to in a little pond, but Quasi isn’t our first escapee this year. Our most hideous fish, a small mottled one, which has one bulging eye and one normal one, disappeared a number of months ago. I can’t remember his name, but it was something outlandish (Eds note: Maddy, short for Mad Eye Moody). No body was found, so we sadly ascribed it to a marauding neighbourhood cat, a predatory bird, or even possibly fishy cannibalism. Anyway, he was replaced by Quasi. Incidentally, the pet shop assistant was very concerned that we may be overstocking our pond. She seemed to think we only had room for about one and a half fish. “How many fish have you got in there at the moment?” Umm…”a couple”? Maybe “some”? (In fact three). I don’t know why she was so worried – they have heaps in those little tanks of theirs. At any rate, a month or two later, our gardener was checking out the pond pump, and found our missing fish in the sump. It had been in there all that time, presumably sucked up one day through the filter system and then trapped there in the dark. He didn’t look any the worse for wear, apart from being a bit undersized, but his personality seems to be rather disturbed. He has a tendency to press his nose against the walls of the pond, as if he doesn’t much care for the light or even the company he’s found himself with. You can imagine him there, dreaming of his happy sump days of peace and quiet.
So, I don’t know if he’s been spreading stories to his pond buddies about how wonderful sump life is, and Quasi has fallen for it, or if finally the bird or cat has had its day, but it’s just the four of them in there now. I’m certainly not going back to that pet shop.