Betta goes to new home

The fish went to his new caretaker today. I went out a little before 1:00 to meet her at the place we had planned, a little convenience store. I recognized her car right away as I pulled up, and I made eye contact with her and smiled.

I had put him back into the original container that Peter had given to me. It was the small plastic container with a hole in the top, the kind they're in when you buy them at the store. When I poured him into it, he was scared and he started swimming quickly around in circles with agitation. It seemed like he could see his reflection faintly in the plastic edges and he wasn't sure if it was another fish. Plus, he was being moved and sloshed around.

I started crying and I said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" again and again. But I can't be the one to keep him, because I really don't want a betta fish, or any fish at all, unless I can keep them someplace where they are almost self-reliant, like an outdoor pool where cold-tolerant fish could eat insects that landed in the water. Not tropical fish that would die in a few minutes from the Pennsylvania winter. (Hmm, question, how do fish get oxygen whenever their ponds freeze over? I guess ponds usually have some streams flowing into them, so certain areas would have fresh water that was always moving.)

So I set his bowl on top of my dumpster-salvaged cardboard boxes, and grabbed it every time I stopped at a stop light, because it slid forward and almost hit the dashboard. He had to be traumatized by yet another car trip, with all the noise and vibrating and splashing around. It's kind of funny and sad at the same time.

When I got out of the car, she got out of her car, and we said hi and I showed him to her. She looked at him and we talked about how his fins had some kind of fin rot or fungus. She said she was going to Petco to find out what kind of medicine they might recommend. I told her that I trusted her judgment, and she could do whatever she thought was appropriate to treat him. I gave her my frozen brine shrimp.

I mentioned to her, actually twice, that I had started crying whenever I was getting him ready to leave. This was something instinctive and automatic that I did, unconsciously, without thinking. I noticed her reactions when I said I had been crying. Was she thinking, "Oh please. You can't be crying over a fish."? I wanted to make sure that she was sympathetic enough to understand that the fish is a living creature with feelings, and we don't just carelessly give them away to someone without a thought about their welfare. Was she going to be callous to the fish and just dump it from one bowl to another without worrying that it could get hurt? Would she just put it into another really small betta vase and not bother to feed it or clean the bowl? Would she do a "Finding Nemo" Darla impression and shake it around and say "WAKE UP FISHY! WAKE UP!!!"

So I decided that she was relatively understanding, although there was a small amount of "ridiculous to cry over a fish," just a tiny bit, that I wasn't sure of. She was calm and behaved normally - I could tell there probably wouldn't be any "WAKE UP FISHYYYY!" incidents. Nothing that bad.

So, I wasn't looking for perfection - I decided this would be good enough, and I gave him away.

I think that she might not do every single thing that I wish someone would do, but at the same time, he will have a clean bowl and he will be fed and kept warm.

She said she'd email me in a month or so to let me know how he's doing, if his fins are getting better, if he's still alive, etc. If she forgets, I could email her. But I do feel better, because now he's being taken care of by somebody who actually WANTS a betta fish.