Bubbles: A true story for children of all ages

Bubbles, a goldfish, had a tumor. Vince Costello and a fish doctor came to her rescue

POULSBO — Bubbles was a two-year-old goldfish and was unwanted. Her owner had given her to a pet store because he could no longer care for her.

The water in her new tank at the pet store wasn’t very clean and they fed her trout food, which is ideal for trout, but goldfish … not so much.

And Bubbles had a sore. A big, red, bulging blob the size of a penny on the left side of her head.

Then, one day, Vince Costello came into the store. He told the owner he was looking for a new goldfish to come live with his two goldfish, Charlie and Alex.

“We have Bubbles here,” the pet shop owner said. “But you wouldn’t want her. She has a tumor.”

Costello bought her. The pet shop owner poured a bunch of the water from Bubbles’s aquarium into a picnic cooler and then scooped her up and dropped her into it.

And then her new owner put her in his car and took her to see Dr. Craig Adams at Poulsbo Animal Clinic.

Adams loves fish and has treated tiny sea horses and big sting rays. These days, he mostly works on koi and goldfish (the big kind of goldfish like Bubbles that you see in garden ponds and big aquariums, not the little ones in fish bowls).

“We can get rid of that tumor,” Adams told Costello.

First, he put some of Bubbles’s water in a clean bucket. Then he added a little medicine to the water that would make her sleepy, and he gently put Bubbles in the pail.

When she was fast asleep, he took her out of the water, weighed her, and gently put her on a table. The nurse covered Bubbles’s body with wet paper towels, except right around the big red blob where the doctor was going to operate.

And the nurse took a plastic hose that pumped the anesthesia water from pail and put it in Bubbles’s mouth. This was so water could get to her gills. (As you may know, fish can’t breathe air. They get their air out of the water flowing over their gills.)

Then Adams very carefully cut all the way around the big, red blob with a sharp knife and — just like that! — the tumor was removed.

Now, when you skin your knee, you can put a Band-Aid on it. But you can’t put a Band-Aid on a goldfish; it would wash right off. And you can’t sew up a goldfish’s cut; a goldfish’s skin doesn’t stretch like ours does.

So how do you bandage a goldfish?

Adams got out a tube of white stuff that looked a lot like toothpaste and spread it on the hole where the big red tumor had been. He called the stuff “bio-bandage.” When it got wet, it got all rubbery and covered the hole where the tumor had been, like a plug in a bath tub.

Then they put Bubbles back in her cooler until she woke up.

When Costello came back, he was happy to see Bubbles. He shook the doctor’s hand and thanked him and carefully put Bubbles and her cooler in his car.

And then he took her to her new home, where Alex and Charlie were waiting to meet her in their big, clean and shiny aquarium.

The End

You can watch a video of Bubbles’ operation at www.facebook.com/PoulsboAnimalClinic.

— Terryl Asla is a reporter for Kitsap News Group. He can be reached at tasla@soundpublishing.com.