I came home from Tulsa last night around 10:30. I was going to stop off at Nick's house to give him his things that I picked up, but I decided to go home first instead.
I walked into the door and did what I usually do first-- look at the fish tank. The light was off and it looked a little bit weird, but I couldn't tell. I flipped on the light and discovered that the tank was horribly cloudy.
I looked closer and noticed that Eyes had this white shit all over his face. The other fish seemed fine, but where was Brains?
That's when I saw him. He was at the back of the tank by the filter, his lips were almost out of the water. His body was almost sideways and he was breathing so incredibly slowly that I thought he was dead at first.
I didn't know what to do, so I panicked.
I called Nick and started yelling, telling him that Brains was dying. Strangely enough, we had talked about Brains earlier and I had told him that I thought those lily pads were making him not able to breath and Nick had told me I was stupid and crazy, so I don't think he believed me at first, but then I started to cry.
I couldn't figure out why it was so cloudy and why Brains couldn't breath. Then I saw that the filter wasn't working. I check the outlet... it's still plugged in. What the hell was wrong with it?
I tell Nick and he says he'll be over quickly with his filter.
I hung up the phone and thought that maybe the outlet just wasn't working. It's an old house and sometimes shit like that happens. So somehow, I started dragging the whole tank and the stand across the floor probably a foot or two until I could reach another outlet. It still didn't work.
I was crying really hard because it was so sad to look at Brains struggling to breath and being able to do anything. I have nightmares about this all of the time.
I was yelling at the filter to work and so then I just started to hit it really hard and low and behold, it turned on.
Nick finally gets there with his filter and so I hold it in the water while he goes to Wal-mart to get some spring water so we can switch out most of the bad water.
At that time Sara comes home. I am in the dining room. All of my shit is thrown on the floor. The fish tank is in the middle of the room. And I'm on my knees holding this filter, crying. She is like "what the hell?"
I told her what happened and then I asked her if she thought Brains was going to die and she was very nice and told me that she thought he was going to make it. But then she looked at him and was like "Oh man... look at his eyes... I mean no, Ashley he's going to be fine!"
He was still just sort of floating there on his side, slowly breathing. It was really sad. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Nick comes back. We started taking out all of the plants and decorations and suctioning out the water and filling it up with new, clean water.
Finally after half an hour or so, with two filters and half a tank of new water, Brains started to swim around again.
I was very relieved.
Nick opened up my old filter and found out that a whole bunch of me and Jorge's hair was wrapped around it and that's what made it stop. I do not know how that much of my hair was in the filter. That is really gross though.
I still went and bought a new filter for $20 because I hate that old one and I don't trust it. And I also gave Nick my lily pads because even though he says I'm wrong, I think that they are somehow involved in Brains' near death experience.
I know that I sound really crazy for crying over a fish and I guess I am.
The moral of the story is though: any time any of you visit the townhouse, please check the fish tank and make sure that Brains isn't dying. It would be much appreciated.