• ⇤
• ⇽
• ≡
• ⇾
• ⇥

aquarium escapee

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Here in Japan, aquarium keepers tend to keep shrimp along with fish. I've taken up the habit.

This morning, Mari found a shrimp on the floor among her shoes. She thought it was a three centimeter insect, and I came over to see what the fuss was when she exclaimed. We quickly realized that it was an escaped shrimp.

I'm not sure how it survived the meter plus fall from the aquarium, or how it then clambored among the many shoes to where we found it. Or for that matter how it managed to climb its way out of the tank in the first place.

Picking the poor lost thing off of the floor was a good deal trickier than I would have guessed. They have quite a kick when you pick them up—even when perhaps exhausted by being out of the water for a time—and can danced around to evade capture. Being wet, they're also hard to grip.

But as soon as I put it back in the tank it went back to its usual behaviour, rummaging through things looking for something "edible". I was surprised (again) to note that it was the tank's lone female shrimp. I wonder if she'd been on a journey to find brackish water in which to release her eggs. Poor girl.

Three good things that happened today:

1. I caught a shrimp

2. the shrimp lived

3. the worst of my cold seems to be past