Three Vancouver women are trying to reunite a lost Midas cichlid with its owner — after it fell out of a tree.
Cindy Wilkinson arrived home last week to find a message from her friend Jan Bailey, saying: "The strangest thing just happened. A fish just fell out of our cedar tree on to the ground".
According to the report in the Vancouver Sun, Jan's husband had gone out to investigate, and found the 25cm/10" orange-coloured fish covered in cedar needles, but still alive.
They quickly found an old fish tank, filled it with water and put the fish in it.
When Wilkinson got the message, she called another friend, Lynda Taylor, who has a big Koi pond and knows a bit about fish.
The three women did some investigating on the internet, and it soon became apparent that it was probably a cichlid of some sort, which would normally be more at home in an aquarium than up a tree — and a local pet store confirmed it was a Midas cichlid, similar to the one pictured above.
How it got into the tree still remains a mystery.
"Maybe someone was cleaning out its tank and left it outside for a minute," said Wilkinson.
Taylor wondered if it had been put into a pond by its owner for the summer months and a hungry heron had snatched it from the water, but then dropped it.
The cichlid, which the women have called 'Lucky' is currently swimming around in a 30 gal. aquarium and the women are keen to reunite him with his owner.
"It's an unusual fish. I'm sure not many people have lost one of these things," said Wilkinson.
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