Throughout my life journey, I have had a few pets. I have raised a variety of small animals such as cats, hamsters, rabbits, and fish. However, I am especially fond of comet-tail goldfish. The five fish that shared a great portion of my life are: Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury.
I obtained Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and Mars from a local fish store in Ames, Iowa throughout the third year of my graduate study (1997). When I first picked them out from the feeders' tank, each of them was no more than an inch or two in length. Two and a half years later, Saturn died. I then added Mercury to the family. Because of the time gap, Mercury was still a baby while others had grown at least 10 to 30 times their original sizes. At first, I was concerned about Mercury being intimidated by the bigger fish. Normally, it would take at least a day or two for the new fish to adjust to the new environment. It would also take the same amount of time for the existing fish to accept a newcomer. However, my concern vanished immediately after placing Mercury in the tank. Although he looked so tiny compared to the others, he was very brave. It took him no time to adapt to the new environment. He made himself right at home the moment he was released into the water. He was not afraid to get his share of the food, and he swam near those bigger fish as if they were transparent. I knew then there was something special about Mercury. He was growing at an amazing rate; he approached the size of Venus in less than 8 months. He then surpassed Mars, and then Jupiter. He became the biggest and the healthiest fish of all. At the end of his life, Mercury had exceeded 9 inch in body length, not counting his comet tails. It wasn't his size that touched my heart, it was his will to live and his ability to cooporate with his master that made him extraordinary.
Shortly after I moved into my first home in March 2001, I decided to get a bigger tank for my fish because they had grown tremendously. Switching them from a 10-gallon to a 35-gallon tank was a good move, I thought. In the 'space' point of view, they had much more room to swim, and they loved it at the instant they were placed in the new tank. During the next 18 months, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter were struggling with bacterial infections. Despite my numerous efforts in treating the water, they were not able to recover. Subsequently, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter passed away one by one. By August 2002, Mercury was the only fish remaining in the tank. At the same time, I was thinking of relocating. Not sure of my future, I was reluctant to get more fish. As a result, Mercury lived in the tank by himself for the rest of his life.
In December 2002, when Mercury was 3.5 years old, he had bacterial infection. Gradually, his vision became impaired. He had trouble seeing and aiming for the flakes (a form of fish food). So I developed a method to get food directly into his mouth, but the sucess of implementing the method relied on the cooporation of Mercury. I used a wooden stick (~0.5 inch diameter) to keep the flake in place under the water. I waited for Mercury to swim by, I then pushed the flake in front of his mouth. It was not an easy task. Both of us were flustrated at first, but after several attempts, he learned the trick. Instead of aiming for the flake, he would aim for the wooden stick. It required precise teamwork and we did it very successfully. I continued feeding him using this method for as long as he could eat.
One day in late September 2004, Mercury spit out every piece of food I fed him, which he had never done before. For the following days, he continued spitting out food every time I tried to feed him. On day 5, he no longer felt like swimming; he lay on the gravel in one corner of the tank. He neither swam nor ate for weeks. He continued laying on the same spot day after day, week after week. His lustrous golden color gradually faded away. Meanwhile, I tried to kill the bacteria with NaCl, tetracycline, and eventually erythromycin, but every single method failed. I really thought that Mercury would die soon, somehow he made it through Columbus day, Halloween, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving. None of his predecessors (Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter) could hang on for that long. Watching him to die slowly was the hardest thing to do. An owner of a fish store suggested a painless way to put Mercury to sleep, but I could not do it. Every morning as soon as I woke up, I would go to Mercury before doing anything else. I would tap on the glass and talk to him for a few minutes, he would respond by breathing stronger and stretching his fins, telling me that he was still alive; and I would visit him again in the evening.
When December arrived, I was looking forward to Christmas, and I hoped that Mercury would make it through although I was not really sure if he could. Knowing that this was probably his last December, I decorated the house earlier because I wanted Mercury to see it. On December 10, 2004, after I woke up, I went downstairs to see him. What I saw was stunning. Mercury had left his place and was swimming in the middle of the tank. It was truly a miracle. He actually woke up from being in a coma for 70 days! He was definitely alive despite the fact that he had not eaten for this entire time. It was absolutely out of my expectation. Oh, my Miracle Mercury, your will to live exceeds that of any other living things' I have ever known. For the next couple of hours, I sat by the aquarium to watch Mercury, and tried to figure what he wanted. I caressed his body with the usual wooden stick. He came up to the surface and opened his mouth. So I wet a flake and delivered it to his mouth. For the first time since September, he swallowed the flake. Later, I gave him another one. I saw his body was shaking as he was trying to swallow the food. It seemed to me that he was in great pain for doing so. His throat was swollen, it appeared that something was growing inside, and that prevented him from eating and breathing. When I gave him the third flake, he was in such pain that he could no longer swallow it. To alleviate his pain, I ground the flakes into tiny pieces of no larger than a milimeter, and let them float all over the entire surface in hope of Mercury could get to them. In addition, I also added liquid food to the water. After trying this method for a week, I knew that it was necessary to develop a better method. Since the tiny flakes could only stay afloat for so long, whatever Mercury couldn't get to would soon sink to the bottom or be sucked into the filter (as well as the liquid food), causing a great deal of contamination. In addition, the actual amount of food Mercury could get from random search (since he was blind) was extremely low; he would soon exhaust his last Joule of energy if a direct feeding method was not developed in time.
In order to feed Mercury directly, it was necessary to confine him. So I transferred him to a hospital tank. He did not like it at all. However, he seemed to understand where I was coming from. He soon learned to take in the food from a medicine dropper. On December 22, 2004, Mercury started to have trouble maintaining his balance. He had trouble to swallow even flakes of one milimeter. I further reduced the size by grounding them to a powder, and mixed them with the liquid food. Mercury somehow hung on past Christmas. On December 26, when my neighbor came over for a lesson on taking care of Mercury, because I had to leave town for 10 days, I noticed that he became quiet. I told my neighbor that Mercury had been very sick. In case he could not make it, just leave him alone in the tank, and I would take care of his body when I came back. My neighbor came back the next day to practice feeding Mercury again. When my neighbor asked about my flight schedule, I told her that I would have to leave for the airport by 10AM tomorrow, I also mentioned that if Mercury happened to die tonight or even half an hour before I left for the airport, I would still have time to bury him. By the evening, Mercury was struggling to maintain an upright position. I held him against the wall with the wooden stick to keep him in place. I called his name, talked to him, and thanked him for being with me for the past five and a half years, especially the last 2.5 years when he was by himself in the tank. I told him how much I loved him and how painful it was for me to see him struggle in the past 88 days. He was truly a courageous fish. When I woke up at Eight O'clock on December 28, 2004, Mercury was struggling madly under the water. Once again I used the wooden stick to turn him back to the normal position and kept him upright. I then went downstairs to watch the news on TV. When I visited him again, he was no longer moving. He had gone somewhere between 8:10AM to 8:30AM. It was again another miracle, not because of his death, but because of the right timing.
I strongly believe that all living things have intelligence of one type or another. Mercury certainly did. He could sense I was going away. He knew that he was not able to hang on till I got back. Instead of soaking his remains under the water, he would rather die and be buried before I left. He really made it easier for me and for my neighbor.
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