In our biology building we have a big tropical fish tank in one of the hallways as a public display. The tank has a cabinet-like wooden cover equipped with a small padlock, to prevent unauthorized additions or removals.

   One day right at the end of the spring semester just as finals were over, one of our grad students came into my office and said, "You’ve got to see this!" He took me out to the hallway.

   The top of the tank had been carefully jimmied open, but not broken. Floating on the surface of the water was what looked like about a pound of fish food flakes. Needless to say, the fish were ecstatic, but gradually the flakes started to cloud the water, and we had to vacuum and filter the whole tank; a real pain in the butt. Left unanswered was the question of why anyone would come in at night, pry open a fish tank, and dump in all that fish food. Cyanide I could understand, if the object were vandalism, but fish food?

   Next day one of the custodians came by and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. "You need to read this. It evidently was taped onto the fish tank, but fell off."

   It said, "I’ve had Rocky in my dorm room for a year, but I can’t bring him home for the summer, and don’t want to flush him down the toilet. I left you enough food to take care of him for the rest of his life."

   "Rocky?" I got a couple of students and we went down to the tank and started probing through the dense aquarium plants. Sure enough, after about 30 seconds, we flushed out a nice, healthy male Siamese fighting fish. Our marine biology students started making bets about how long Rocky would make it in a tank full of reasonably large, often hungry fish, but damned if Rocky didn’t hang on for almost two years. I’d still like to know why Rocky’s master didn’t just leave us the can of fish food. I hope he wasn’t a pre-med.