What Inspires Me? Goldfish Rescuer
We all need another hero!
Channeling Tina Turner (my personal superhero) today, singing in her rockin’-stompin’ heels with one small but mighty change.
Change “don’t” to “all” in the Thunderdome Theme on behalf of unwanted, forgotten, deserted goldfish and friends everywhere.
We All Need Another Hero!—sing it Tina!
Writing stories about Norman, One Amazing Goldfish gives me great joy, but also comes tinged with great responsibility, especially when I hear people say those four dreaded words uttered in the same sentence as the word “goldfish” or “fish” or frankly anything other than bodily waste and TP.
“Flushed down the toilet…”
Hello Brenda Prohaska, beautician, cancer survivor, and fish rescuer!
I first read of Brenda’s fish rescue efforts in a NY Times article about how she sprang into action on behalf of 300 goldfish that had somehow washed into a basement during Hurricane Sandy.
Brenda took up fish rescuing about three years ago, after learning of the 300 trapped goldfish and quickly became NYC’s official fish help hotline—a weighty, exhausting and expensive task. Like all superheroes, she needed a trusty sidekick. Lucky for her—and stranded fish—as the NY Times article put it, in 2020 a disabled construction worker, Laboy Wiggins, “rescued the fish rescuer.”
Reasons fish need rescuing are “varied as fish in the sea: a messy divorce in which a restraining order prevented a spouse from collecting his fahaka pufferfish; a man moving to California stopped by Transportation Security Administration agents at the airport for trying to take his suckermouth catfish in his carry-on bag.”
Not to mention the “won it at the fair but it didn’t die” tough-luck goldfish variety.
Laboy set up and maintains their facebook page: NYC Fish Rescue.
And they are in the process (perhaps have) established a non-profit Fish Rescue group.
And here’s the link to their Fish Rescue Go Fund Me Campaign:
Brenda’s fish-ambulance is a repurposed hearse.
NYC Fish Rescue isn’t the only ditched, deserted, abandoned hope for fish either. There and group in other places—google it!
Now that’s inspiring!
For more about Brenda, Laboy, NYC Fish Rescue, here’s the NY Times Article, “When Helpless Fish Need a Hero”
