Lucky
Lennie and I buried Lucky this morning. Lucky was a little black, Lionhead fish that I had once rescued. Several months ago he was stuck between two rocks that he had swam between and become wedged. When I saw him there I moved one of the rocks and he floated to the surface and then began to swim. Although both his sides were scraped to a pale gray from trying to free himself, he was otherwise fine. When I put my hand into the water to touch him he swam right into my hand as if he knew that I had saved him. He continued to swim into my hand whenever I would put it into the water. That is how Lennie came to name him “Lucky”. Lucky was just a sweet little being. He had no dorsal fin so maneuvered very slowly through the pond with the comets, orandas and two very docile little sharks. He looked like Moby Dick in the pond, dwarfing the others. When we returned I sought him out right away and sure enough he swam into my hand once again. Lucky was still the same size, but the other fish had tripled their size. He obviously was not getting enough of the food. Then three days ago, during the heavy and constant rains that we have been getting here, Lennie let a couple of guys use the garage to saw some wood. When I realized what the noise was I went running out to find the pond uncovered with sawdust blowing into the water. To the fish the sawdust just looked like fish flakes floating on top. They were eating it. I tried to swish it towards the filter and make the guys put up a tarp and then covered the pond with a sheet. When we returned home two of the orandas were missing. The workmen claimed they knew nothing. The next day Lucky wasn’t swimming or eating as much. By nightfall he was dead. Pets and people come and go in and out of our lives. Some leave a special mark on our hearts. I will never forget Lucky.
We would normally think of sawdust as just wood. Just as we would think of an applesauce as just an apple. Sawdust is composed of wood that has been treated with preservatives to stop insects from infesting it. The most common chemical used to treat lumber used to be chromated copper arsenate, or CCA. In 2003, however, the Environmental Protection Agency restricted the use of CCA in residential settings due to health and environmental concerns about arsenic leaching out of the wood. This is why the wood comes with warnings to wear gloves and masks when cutting. And what about the apples? Have you noticed how shiny most of the apples are in the supermarket? They feel almost like there is a plastic coating on them. Well there is! Apples use to be coated with beeswax to make them shiny and appealing. Beeswax became too expensive, so a replacement was found in the form of a type of acrylamide- a form of plastic that adheres to the skin of the apple. This cannot be washed off. Aim for organic apples instead that have no coating on them. They are dull, not shiny. Diet has played a huge part in Lennie’s recovery from Stage IV cancer. We buy as much organic as we can, which we find in Hawai’i at the health food stores and abundance of local markets.
So in that small amount of sawdust was the poison that killed my little fish. It swirled around in the wind, being breathed in by the rest of us. We teeter on a very precarious balance with the amount of chemicals that we ingest. We do harm to our bodies every day and the majority of us will never learn and will even ignore common sense such as ‘why are the apples so shiny?’ And then there’s the cucumbers….
Goodbye Lucky, my little fish friend.
Kathryn