The Case of the Missing Fish

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 9

Cyclone is missing.  When we came in last night from Madrid, we dropped our things in the entryway and turned on the lights so that we could check on our fish.  We had left them with one of those big food block things that dissolves into the water over the course of several days.

Well.  We looked into the tank, and could only find Fishy!  It’s not a very big tank, and there really is no place to hide, but still we looked and looked, as though we expected him (or her) to appear out of nowhere. He didn’t. 

“Where’s Cyclone?” the kids asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said.  “It’s a mystery.”  I looked a little more closely.  “Fishy does look a little fat, though.”

“Yeah,” C.C. said.  “His belly is HUGE.”

Are goldfish cannibals?  I don’t have a clue.  I called Alec, who went straight from the train station to an event he had to attend.  I got his voicemail.

I thought C.C. would be more upset, since it was her fish that appeared to have bitten the dust, but she seemed fine.   I made some pasta, and the three of us sat around the kitchen eating it.

“So,” I said.  “What do you guys think happened to Fishy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it” said Milo.

“Maybe Fishy did eat him,” I mused.

“I SAID I  don’t… want… to… talk about it!”

“Okay, I’m sorry, buddy.”

“You’re right, Mama, his belly does look super big.”

Milo, fed up at this point, stomped out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.  I followed him, and he was really mad.   I felt awful for having laughed.  Maybe he felt badly because we insinuated that his fish is a murderer.

I got the kids to bed, and Alec called me from his dinner.  His theory?  Cyclone jumped.  I find this hard to believe.  The tank is covered with a Plexiglas cover, and there is only a very small triangular opening at one corner.  Also, he has never demonstrated any suicidal tendencies in the past.  It seems that a jump would require a concerted effort.

“Look under the rug, and under that big armchair,” he prods.

“You do it, when you come home,” I say.

Still, when we hang up, I peek tentatively under the furniture.  No sign of Cyclone.

When Alec came home, he searched the room in which the tank lives.  “You know,” he said, “He could have jumped pretty far.”

“Are you kidding me?  For him to have gotten out in the first place and then to do the long jump?  I don’t think so.”

“Maybe Sulma swept him up,” Alec said.  Sulma cleans our house for us.

“She left a note about the laundry, and she didn’t say anything about the fish.  Don’t you think she would have mentioned it?”

“I guess so.”

We went to bed with the mystery unsolved.