Sooty the goldfish drops in for dinner
By Nick Britten
(Filed: 31/12/2005)
What is transported through the air by another creature and comes down the
chimney at Christmas?
Answer: Sooty the goldfish.
The 10in-long specimen is thought to have been plucked from an ornamental
pond by a heron that carried it to a roof in preparation for dinner. But
the bird's carelessness allowed Sooty to slip out of the frying pan, as it
were, and into the fire.
Sooty's luck held, however. He bounced off a pile of potato peelings that
had just been thrown on the fire and landed on the hearth, where the
surprised home-owner scooped him up and put him in a washbasin filled with
warm water.
Despite being bitten, blackened and a little flame-grilled, Sooty seemed
none the worse for his ordeal yesterday and was enjoying a second lease of
life in an aquarium at a pet shop.
Bill Brooks, 65, who was eating his dinner when Sooty - as he has been
christened after being covered during his fall - popped down the chimney,
said: "I was watching television and actually eating fish and chips for
dinner when there was a noise up the chimney.
"Suddenly this thing appeared out of nowhere and bounced off some potato
peelings I'd thrown on to the fire, out of the flames and on to the
hearth.
"It was covered in soot and I thought it was a bird but when I poured some
water over it and it started flipping I realised it was a fish. I put it
in the sink while I ran the bath then carried it up and chucked some bread
in to feed it."
Mr Brooks, a former mine worker from Mansfield, Notts, called Terry Marsh,
a wildlife expert who runs an animal rescue centre in the town. Mr Marsh
transferred Sooty to the pet shop.
He said: "He's got a heron's beak mark on his back and has lost some of
his scales. I think the bird must have landed on the chimney and had the
fish in its mouth sideways. When the bird tried to flip the fish straight
to swallow, it must have dropped him, maybe because it was too big or too
slippery.
"Sooty is quite big and weighs about a pound. He's been well-fed and
that's probably what saved his life.
"He's been through a bit of an ordeal but he seems all right. We'll keep
him here while we try to find out where he has come from. Someone might
report a missing fish, but the heron could have carried him for miles."
Martin Brown, animal health officer at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust,
said it was common for herons to take fish from garden ponds particularly
during cold snaps as their natural feeding grounds froze over.
"These ponds tend to have pumps and running water, which prevent them from
freezing over, and a heron can spot them from quite a height," he said.
"The bird will nip in and take a fish, and when the owner next checks
their pond, they wonder where it has gone.
"A heron will try and swallow the fish on the spot, but this fellow seems
to have bitten off more than he could chew. This fish sounds quite large
and a heron may well have difficulty getting one this size down.
"I have heard of people finding fish on their front lawns that have been
dropped by birds but nothing like this. It's quite amazing."
Mr Brooks is not alone in being amazed by falling fish. There have been
instances of fish, tomatoes, frogs and coal falling with rain.
Last year villagers in Knighton, Shrops, reported being hit by a deluge of
minnows falling with rain after the fish were sucked up from the sea and
carried up to 50 miles by winds and mini-tornadoes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/nsooty31.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/31/ixnewstop.html
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