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fare well, beloved Gill

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Gill, our 9-10 year old angel fish, has died. He was a resident with us for some five years, nearly five and a half. I don't know what killed him, but he was flagging pretty badly toward the end. Never a fish with a lot of meat on him, he'd become skinnier and lost some luster while seemingly becoming tougher. Like watching Iggy Pop age.

At the very end, the black skirt tetras had begun to pick on poor ol' Gill. I transferred the poor fish to our smaller tank, but it was the end of the line. Healing from the ravages of the other fish, he looked better for a couple of days, but then we found him on the bottom of the tank. Still slowly breathing, but with the pleco sucking the slime of his skin!

This is a fish that survived 36C water for three days when a heater malfunctioned during a heat wave in August. It came to us from my friend Richard Seabright, along with a small number of other mature fish. Two of those died in an earlier August heat wave (our A/C wasn't working at all at the time), and the third had to go back to the pet store (a clown loach that had gone a little nuts without any similar fish, and had become a relentless fin-nipper and rowdy bully). So Gill was something of a marker for me; at least I could keep *something* alive.

I put him down. But I still expect to see him when I walk through the door!