Good Bye Bali

So the new betta which we got probably a week ago, died yesterday. Or rather, I killed it. By accident-- well, actually on purpose. This is so depressing.

We found Bali (yes, it was even named) yesterday morning with some fuzzy white stuff on his skin. I've been painstakingly feeding him one pellet of food every several hours, so I know it wasn't there before I went to bed. Well, there it was. It looked kind of harmless, but in several hours, the poor fish was practically laying on its side and refusing to eat anything. The white fuzz took over his back, gills, and tail. After staring at him forever, trying to decide what to do, I decided that he was probably going to die very soon, and I wasn't going to bother going to get antifungal solution or whatever it was that might save him. I couldn't bring myself to just flush him, and I couldn't stand to watch him slowly die. So I did what anybody who saw that deadly white stuff would want to do: I held the listless fish in my hand, and tried to rub the stuff off under running water. It was actually a lot slicker than I would have thought, and after I put him back in the bowl, he swam around a little. But most of it was still on him. He looked momentarily a little more lively, but in retrospect, it was probably just stress. Anyway, I felt just awful. Like I'd made his last moments on earth just a little more horrible. So feeling like complete shit, I ran him outside and dumped him out on the snow so he would die immediately. Which he did. But I couldn't really tell at first because it was dark and I lost him in the melted hole in the snow. So I felt around in the snow until I found his poor dead fish body, scooped him up, put him in a glass to make sure he was totally dead, and then sent him on his way. I'm sorry Bali, I wish we could have enjoyed a longer time together.