Fitzgerald. The Fish with Kissy Lips 💋

All about my journey to him.

It all started in late April of 2018.

I had stumbled upon a betta care video from SolidGoldAquatics. She was doing a water change for her dumbo ear betta. Up until that point I had only had regular halfmoon betta fish. As soon as I saw her betta's fluffy fins gracefully flowing all around him as he swam, I decided I needed a dumbo ear betta in my life. At this time I still had Spook (the betta in my first blog post) and knew I would need to purchase another tank. This wasn't an issue. The "issue" was that I was about to graduate college the first week of May which was only one week away. Which would mean a whirlwind of moving out of my college dorm and back to my hometown. Hardly the time to bring a new fish into the mix. But I decided to go shopping anyway. My mentality was: WHAT IF HE'S OUT THERE JUST WAITING FOR ME IN A CUP. I went to about three different Petcos and one small local fish store. I didn't really "connect" with any of the fish I saw. Which, in retrospect, was good.

It was finals week at school and I had finished all of my finals before finals week so I had a week to do nothing. I decided to get a head-start on moving out so I packed up everything that could fit in my car and headed home. Once I was there, I saw different videos on YouTube about a site called Aquabid. It's a site where you bid on fish, and the highest bidder wins, kind of like eBay (~foreshadowing~). But most of the fish on Aquabid ship from Thailand which requires transhippers to get involved and you'd have to pay them as well as the original shipper and all I saw was the cost going up. As I was watching more and more Aquabid unboxing videos some eBay unboxing videos started to pop up. So I decided to give eBay a shot and searched "dumbo ear betta" or something of the sort in the search bar.

This was maybe the seventh or eighth picture down and as soon as I saw it I FELL IN LOVE. I instantly knew this was the fish for me. I had to have him. I read more about him and the seller and as I'm reading more and more about him, it turns out THE SELLER IS LOCATED IN THE CITY RIGHT NEXT TO ME. At this point, I'm convinced it's fate, it's meant to be, how can I buy this fish now. I messaged the seller and asked if I could just buy him now and skip the bidding process. He got back to me pretty quickly and said, "Unfortunately there is no 'Buy Now' for this item. You have to bid." There were still four days left in the bidding period, with one bid, putting him at $30. It wasn't until the last 24 hours of the bid when the price started hiking up. I'll spare you the details about all of the different prices that were bid, but it hiked all the way up to $50.55 during the last hour with 14 bids. I didn't mind the price so much because luckily, the seller had 'local pickup' as an option so I didn't have to pay the shipping price as well. My heart sunk at the thought of not winning this bid because I had already picked out his name.

The last 50 seconds came and I input my bid of $51.55.

We all know the outcome.... I WON.

I immediately messaged the seller and asked if I could pick him up TODAY (the day of the bid).

He said as soon as he received the payment he would send me his address. I got that done, he sent me his address and..... guess what.....

HE WAS FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM ME.

I ran out of the door (I made my dad go with me because I didn't want to get kidnapped by this strange eBay man I've never met before [he was a very nice man though]) and made my way there.

When I got there, Fitzgerald was already bagged up and ready to go. I was ready to just grab him and leave, but the seller said "You can look at him if you want." Which, LOL at me because I didn't even look at him when I grabbed the bag and started to leave. I was just so excited to finally have him after four days of waiting. My dad drove us back home so I could admire my new friend ❤️

Next month exactly, it will be one year since I got him. That's it, that's the story. 🥰