Third time's the charm :-(

Let's all observe a moment of silence for Napoleon II, who died last night in a tragic accident. Although circumstances may point to suicide, I refuse to believe that Napoleon was so unhappy as to take his own life.

The 2nd thing I do after getting up in the morning is feed Napoleon. This morning, I noticed that his tank was empty. It was very sad. I called and called for him, but there was no response. No angelfish came running. He's jumped out of the tank before, but it's been years since his last escape attempt. And both of those instances occurred right before dinner time; he just got a little over-excited about fish flakes and vaulted out of the tank, so I was there to rescue him right away.

But this third, and arguably successful, escape attempt was very different. It happened in the middle of the night, while I was sound asleep. Maybe he was having one of his seizures. And none of the cats woke me up to save the day. Fuzzy little jerks. Now I know why a cat wasn't cast as Lassie. Fortunately, Napoleon jumped behind the bookshelf, so they weren't able to get to him and gobble him up. That was the first place I looked once I established beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was not in the tank. (Sometimes he can be hard to see if he's sideways. He's very skinny.) Time of death was determined to be quite a bit before 7:37 am; he was quite dry, stiff, and covered in dust.

Napoleon was a good fish. I'd had him for almost 3 years. I wonder how old angelfish generally get. He certainly would have had many good years in front of him, if he hadn't met this early and unnatural demise.

So sad. I guess I'll go check out the fish store later this week. I hope they still have little puff fish! Do you think I should retire the name Napoleon?