Rainbow, Goldie and Ralph (so named by my nieces and nephew in Boise) have been my faithful companions these six months.  Being the talented goldfish they are, they have performed their piscine duties of being pretty and not dying with remarkable diligence — even when I abandoned them to the negligent care of a middle-aged Guatemalan woman for two weeks while I went traipsing across northern Africa on camels.

Imagine, therefore, my astonishment upon discovering this morning that Rainbow has disappeared.  Not only that, but Goldie and Ralph are acting like everything is perfectly okay!  Which can only mean that one of two things has happened to Rainbow:

Either he was rescued by a merry band of misfits and a crazy pellican so he could go back to his family in the Great Barrier Reef . . .

or he was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot like a kick-ass Hebrew prophet-fish.

We all know that Rainbow came from PetsMart, not Australia, so it must have been the chariot of fire.  Incredible.  It’s a shame I slept through it.