Engelbert’s Official Eulogy: It’s never easy when a pet dies. Especially one that you have formed such an emotional connection with. This post is about my fish. Before you call me crazy for loving a fish so much, I just want to say that he was more than a fish to me; he was more like a dog. (As crazy as that sounds). A pet is a pet no matter what . . . mostly, I don’t form an emotional connection with my pet fish, but for Engelbert, I had. He was born late August 2012 and lived until May 4th, 2014.
The story starts off with me going to PetSmart on September 7th, 2012, to pick up some new fish. I had a fish named “Santa’s Favourite Elf” (don’t ask me why – me and an old friend named it) that had died, and I needed new ones. I bought a whole bunch of fish, including black goldfish and gold mystery snails. Then, a worker there came up to me and said: “Hi, we have a fish with only one eye and we can’t sell it, and nobody wants it, so do you want it? It’s free.” I was like, okay, cool, free fish! She showed me it, and at first I thought it was pretty ugly ’cause y’know one eye and everything. He didn’t lose it in a fight, he just was a very sick and mutated fish. His eye was actually still there, just dug really, really deep into his body so of course he was unable to use it. So there I am, I’m off with my new fish and whatever. I get home, put them in a tank. Within a month, every single one of the fish in there except for Engelbert was dead. (Also, I named him Engelbert because at the time I thought he needed an ugly name to fit him . . . That was so mean, he’s like the cutest fish ever) One of the black goldfish literally jumped out of the tank (stupid fish), and I found him on the floor, all dried up, with his tail sticking in the air. He must’ve been flapping around out of the water. He had a brother or sister, and then they died a week later. They stared out into the spot where he had jumped out, it was pretty sad. Fish have good relationships with each other and feelings, too. We don’t give fish enough credit. They’re not smart but they are way smarter than we give them credit for. Did you know fish can actually see in colour? Not many animals can. Fun fact. Anyway, caring on. Then the snails died. One was a mom and one was a daughter, it was so cute. The daughter would ride on the mom’s shell everywhere around the tank. But then, the daughter died, and the mother was so distraught she refused to come out of her shell so eventually she died, possibly from starvation because she refused to eat. I think there was other fish, too, but anyway, there was Engelbert. My brother and I had a mini contest going. He told me Engelbert would be the first to die, and I said, he’d be the last. I won. Woo-hoo. His tank was directly beside my bed, and I had the honour of being able to watch him almost 24/7. I even wrote a blog post over a year ago on my old blog about him. Soon, his infectious happiness just seemed to grow on me.
Engelbert was the happiest fish I have ever seen. Seriously. The healthiest fish I have ever had will just sit there staring off into nothing and only swim around when necessary. Engelbert was in pain half of his life, yet he loved food. And he was a smart cookie. I would show him his food, and he would swim in circles, flip around. Food excited him, it was so cute. My mom and I referred to him as a “dog”. That’s how he acted around food. Also, he loved money. If you put a bill up to his tank, he’d get really excited. Also if you waved to him – he loved people. Sometimes it looked like he even waved back.
Here is some of the conditions that he had and miraculously recovered from:
- One eye missing
- Poor swimmer
- Excessive bloating
- Scales turning red, purple, and even black (he’s naturally a very bright orange fish)
- Skin peeling off excessively
- Internal and external bleeding
- Weird tumorous looking bumps all over his body
- Weird white spots all over his body
- Cataract in one eye (as you all know, cataract is something you do not recover from. Once you have it, you have it for life unless you get immediate surgery on it. Engelbert’s whole eye turned pure white. No black. He couldn’t see and was completely blind; it was creepy to look at. A few days later and his eye was back to normal.)
- Very weak immune system (which would lead to bacterial infections, and sickness)
- Dropsy (a fatal bacterial infection that you do not recover from – this is how he died.)
- And more
I used to call him my “miracle fish”. I still do. You know Finding Nemo, where Dory says: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming”? I also used to say that Engelbert was the one who invented that quote, because it just related to him so much. When he turned purple and bled and skin peeled, he would swim around more than any of the other healthy fish. He loved to swim. Sorry, Dory. Engelbert did it better.

© Finding Nemo 2003
Again, he was just a fish, yet Engelbert always surprised me, and never failed to inspire me. We were almost together for two years, and it’s been a good one. I would always fear the way he died. I’m not religious, but even I prayed that Engelbert would just die a peaceful, painless death at an old age. He had a happy life, that’s for sure, and enjoyed life’s simple pleasures (of being a fish, anyway). His bloating would come and go, but about two months ago, he started becoming so bloated, I thought he would explode. His natural bright orange colour faded away into a pale, sick-looking yellow colour. His scales puffed out and became filled with a white liquid and his whole body was bleeding from the inside and out. Every day he would be bleeding and it was really hard to watch. It looked really painful, yet still, that little guy refused to give up. My friend told me, “If he’s still swimming it means he’s still fighting and not ready to die”. And that really kept me going and felt good. Although he was very large and had difficulty swimming, he still did it, and loved it – especially the food part. Then, weeks and weeks went by. The tank got filthy, he looked even more sick. He couldn’t even swim. I think he died because dropsy is the process of having a weak immune system, so the fish’s body can no longer process water, and it gets built up inside of you – so I think he died by having his insides crushed, which makes me feel even more sad. He was such a happy fish and did not deserve any of that to happen to him. I’m not saying any fish deserves it, but, especially not him – he loved life as a fish and was always so happy and didn’t stop fighting until he couldn’t fight anymore. A few weeks ago, (the weekend of May 4th), he stopped swimming. I would show him the food, you could see his eye dance but he couldn’t move to eat. He tried so hard, he just couldn’t move. He couldn’t swim. He couldn’t get up for food. And if I tried waving to him, he would try his hardest to swim away and avoid eye contact, almost as if he was ashamed of being seen looking like that. It was so sad. It pains me to say this, but, it was better off this way. I couldn’t keep seeing him in pain day after day. So finally, on May 4th, I was writing some of my book and I reached over on my bed to look at the rough copy of it for notes and his mouth was clamped shut, so I knew he stopped breathing.
Whenever a pet or someone I know dies, I just want to get in the funeral and out as soon as possible. I still feel bad about this, but, I didn’t really do anything special for his death. We flushed him in the toilet, and I said a couple nice words. In my head, I was ranting off into paragraphs (sort of like this). So I guess this is kind of late, but, this is for you, Engelbert! It was really hard to say goodbye because I didn’t want to. Not for years to come. He was my special little fish and I loved him with all of my heart. ❤
Then, I felt even worse because I heard a lot about people burying their favourite fish, not flushing them. I felt so guilty because since he meant soooo much to me, I had myself going: “Why didn’t I bury him? I’m such a terrible person.” Then my dad and boyfriend helped me a lot by saying: “Engelbert would have wanted to be in the ocean where all of the other fish are. The water is where fish belong, not in the ground. Water is their habitat, where they’re meant to be, and where they want to be.” Now I feel way better. (And then my boyfriend was saying how dirty the water is that there could be some kind of nuclear distortion in the water that would make him come back to life as a super fish. Haha, he’s insane.)
So I miss seeing him next to me every night, I miss being able to watch his happiness, I miss being able to become happy by being with him, and I miss him overall. Sometimes I blame myself and I know I shouldn’t. I loved him so much and hopefully he knew it. I had to spend several nights with his dirty water in an alone, empty tank beside my bed which made matters worse. Now, I have new fish to live on in his memory. I will miss you, Engelbert! This blog post is for your memory as well.
I could go on much longer, but I’ll just leave it with this: Thank you so much, Engelbert. For teaching me to be strong when I feel weak, for teaching me to keep moving when I didn’t want to do anything, and for inspiring me to always be happy. ❤ You were my favourite fish and will always be my favourite fish, and I will never forget you. Hopefully you are somewhere in fishy heaven right now reading this and dancing around happily. 🙂

Rest in paradise, Engelbert. I will miss you. ♥

Engelbert and I September 2013.
Hopefully, this section of my blog will be more happy. I will always love Engelbert the most, but, meet the new gang!
After Engelbert died, I made a resolution to buy fish of his same kind to live on his memory. Unfortunately they had no pure Engelberts. They mated his type with a black fish so they have black tails. Still, they’re replicas of Engelbert . . . and cuties! They are best friends. They swim together, follow each other, they do everything together. They are the closest fish I’ve ever seen and it is too cute. The snails are also getting really close! And the fish are still babies. Soon they will look exactly like Engelbert, but with two eyes and a black tail! Also the fish treat the snails nicely, which is awesome. Never had fish other than Engelbert that treated the snails without aggression. 😛 Meet Chocolate, Chip, and snails, Milly, and Jude! (Oh, also, I know they look like reflections. That’s how much they look alike and how close they are! NONE of these pictures are reflections of a fish. All of these pictures have two fish in them. 🙂 )
And last but not least, the rest of my entourage . . .
THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR READING!
REST IN PEACE TO ENGELBERT, A BEAUTIFUL, LOVING, CUTE, HAPPY FISH!
2012-2014 (In Our Hearts Forever♥)
(and thanks to Chocolate and Chip and all other pets and humans who have helped me through it. Couldn’t have done it without you!) 🙂
Love forever,
Hello, I have some very important information for you, if you would, please share it with as many people as you can as soon as possible.
No Well Water is safe or suitable for animal consumption or plant growth, Fluorine is the 13th most abundant element in the earths crust, and water obtained from the ground will be contaminated with very high levels of Fluorides (fluorine + a positive ion). One small glass of Well Water, on average, contains the Fluoride equivalent of one pea sized dab of Fluoridated Toothpaste, this is about 0.7 parts per million of fluoride, however, any amount of fluoride exposure is incredibly harmful for all biological life.
We have effectively increased our exposure to Fluorides on average by 50,000% when we choose to expose our selves to this water source, that is in comparison to the majority of our evolutionary history of drinking surface waters that contain which contain roughly 500x less fluoride, although, some wells may even be contaminated with levels as high as 12+ ppm.
I believe that most people do not understand the science of why fluoride’s are so dangerous, so I’d like to explain why, but first I’d like to point out the fact that we are the only life on this planet to dig deep holes in the ground to obtain water to drink, at least deep enough to contaminate our water with high levels of fluoride in this way.
The safest alternative is distilled water, or rain water (I suggest a collection time during long periods of rain to avoid polluted air contamination), filters like reverse osmosis do not do enough and they hardly filter the majority of fluorides at all because most naturally occurring fluorides are relatively small compounds, but they may help filter many larger fluoride compounds like those which may be additionally added to water supplies by many city water suppliers. Regardless of which fluorides are getting through, distilled water, or rain, will remove them all, except those leached into water droplets through out atmosphere, rain will be especially vulnerable to this and there are about 50 parts per billion of hydrogen fluoride / other fluoride gasses in our atmosphere, but rain collected should contain less than 0.008 parts per million of fluorides on average.
So, why are fluorides dangerous…?
Besides specific bond formations that may occur within the body and disrupt normal biological processes, like that of calcium bonds in our bones rather than our teeth due to excessive fluorides in the blood stream, here is the key issue behind fluorides disastrous effects, which continue be disastrous even after bonds like this occur.
“Electronegativity”, which is the tendency to draw in electron mass, is a fundamental atomic property of all the elements on the periodic table, out of all these 118 elements of the Periodic Table, the element fluorine has the highest Electronegativity, and, more importantly, one eighth of the entire spectrum of Electronegativy for these Elements on the Periodic Table, is a gap between Element Oxygen, and Element Fluorine.
Let me just repeat that once again…
1/8th, of the entire spectrum of Electronegativity, for the elements on the periodic table, is a gap, between elements oxygen and fluorine.
That kind of Electronegative energy, drawing in electrons in a biological system, (which is a finely tuned system of exchanging electrons), will extremely distort functions of biological systems, especially systems that have not evolved to cope with the levels of Fluoride they are being exposed to.
We are 70% water like most life on this planet, and only throughout roughly the last 100,000 years or so have we begun digging these holes in the ground to obtain water.
Evolution does not occur rapidly enough for this fluoride contaminated water to really be called “safe” by now, one quick example of the the slow progression of evolution is that we split from Chimpanzee’s / Bonobo’s nearly 7 million years ago.
There is roughly 500 times less fluoride in natural sources of water like rain, or springs, even rivers and lakes, than there is in this water from holes in the ground. Drinking and using this water for farming, globally, is destroying our bodies, developing a wide spectrum of health issues for us, our pets, and our plants, I’m sure you’ve noticed we are the only wild animals getting cancer.
A good example of the powerful Electronegativity that the Element Fluorine has is when experiments are done in it’s pure state as a Gas, in this state, it is so reactive, that almost any substance, Glass, Metals, or even WATER, BURN, with a Bright Flame in a Jet of Fluorine Gas, WITHOUT the need for a Spark.
This incredibly high Electronegativite Energy still lingers even after Fluorine forms a bond with positive ions, and these are what we call “Fluoride’s”.
Among the wide spectrum of various health Issues fluoride can cause, Cancer is a big one, but i’d like to focus on another not so obvious symptom of fluoride exposure.
I think it is crucial to understand this particular issue, i’ll start with the fact that we are 70% water, we need a lot of water each and every day, and our body can detect the amounts of Fluoride, along with the minerals that end up in our water as it is processed for use in the blood stream, and if this amount is higher than the natural levels we have evolved to cope with, our brains have evolved a coping mechanism which attempts to put a damper on precious processes such as higher cognitive functions involved with imagination, functions that are involved with implementing new neurons, or functions that strengthen new neurons and neurons already in use for more reliable access. This damper is done as a way to preserve these functions for more significant moments, which will be judged by your conscious thought and with emotions, rather than just allowing these functions to be used all the time, because doing so would damage neurons your trying to strengthen if there are fluorides present in the blood stream. (this is hard for me to explain so I hope you understand.)
This damper is the reason why cognitive dissonance occurs in the minds of so many people, many of us who are so heavily poisoned by these fluorides would much rather rely on a set of neurons that are already hardwired and therefore reliable, than to risk developing new ones that may be distorted by the presence of excessive amounts of fluorides.
Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, are emotions that help you to overcome this damper that the Human Brain Implements, these emotions help your conscious mind in ways that get you “worked up” enough to use these higher cognitive functions, it is like forcing your brain to use these parts it’s trying to preserve (imagination and functions that are involved with implementing new neurons) because your consciously telling it that you think what your doing is extremely important. A good example of this, is if your having a discussion with your boss at work and he is noticeably upset because you didn’t do your job right, you’ll stress your self out over this kind of event in order to strengthen particular neurons for more reliable access so it won’t happen again.
That sort of behavior can cause someone to act impulsively, i’m sure you’ve seen it many times even with your self, we want to stick to a set of reliable and hardwired neurons, as if we know it all and we don’t need improvement on our methods or awareness of particular things… and many times cognitive dissonance will occur as we try to avoid stress, anxiety, and depression, as we are met with concepts perhaps true, which seem counter intuitive to us.
To make it short, excessive fluoride in the blood stream can literally makes it stressful to try to imagine and develop new ways of thinking… Your brain is telling you not too do something via these emotions, because of fluorides present in your blood stream, and unless you overcome this stress with your conscious judgement of importance, like realization of truth and excitement for learning this truth, cognitive dissonance will occur.
Money, and other various ways of cultures, will keep us plugging along sticking to Hardwired Neurons doing something we wish we weren’t doing, or preforming a job which barely pays at all, perhaps worthless and unsustainable as well. There are many various ways our cultures promote these bad ideas, among each other in this adversity, must stand up for the rights of our planet, to live sustainability, to do so we must use our consciousness to it’s utmost potential, that means getting off of fluoride as soon as possible…. that’s the first step I believe. Money is evil in the sense that it is a false incentive and provides many unconscious opportunity’s for the destruction of our planet, it will promote the success of particular neurons, meanwhile demoting others, and we rewarded our selves self chemically when we receive “money” for doing a job right, or when we receive / spend / have money, this strengthens those neurons even further, it’s all about money sometimes, and not the actual thing it’s self.
Rain (Like Distillation) = Averages 0.008 ppm (parts per million) fluoride.
Surface Waters (For example, Lakes, Rivers, Springs) = Averages 0.05 ppm fluoride.
Bottled Water = Averages 0.1 ppm fluoride.
Well Water = Ranges from 0.7 – 12+ ppm fluoride .
Tap Water = Ranges from 0.7 – 12+ ppm fluoride (In america, the maximum allowance is 4.0 ppm, regulated by the FDA).
Additionally fluoridated water supplies often use chemicals we’ve never even come into contact with throughout the last 3.5 billion years of evolution here on earth, for example, chemicals like Sodium fluorosilicate (Na2SiF6)and HydroFluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6). Fluoridation of a public water supply is medication without consent.
Some Of The Easiest Thing And Most Important Thing You Can And Should Do Immediately to avoid the majority of Fluoride Exposure, Is to drink distilled water, and to avoid tea or tobacco, they both contain very high levels of fluoride.
Distilled water is very inexpensive, it cost roughly $0.88 for a 1 Gallon jug which is available at nearly every grocery store, otherwise you can order it from a water supplier like “Culigan”, for nearly the same price.
Please start drinking distilled water, or rain water (collected sometime near the end of a storm, during a long duration of rain preferably, to give time to clean the atmosphere and avoid polluted air contamination) as soon as possible, drink, cook, and process your foods with this water.
Distilled water and rain water, are the process of evaporating water, collecting and condensing the Vapors, which will leave you with 100% uncontaminated (no dissolved solids) h2o.
If your worried about not getting enough minerals anymore once you switch to distilled water, let me assure you that if you eat acidic fruits, or add some lime or lemon (Organic) to your distilled water, you will be completeeeely fine… and feeling much better than you were before.
For water with more alkalinity, you can add coconut water to your distilled water, and there are plenty more options out there for you to try, but a proper food diet is all that is necessary, many fruits will contain all the minerals you need in your diet, Banana, Cantaloupe, Water Melon, etc, fruit is incredibly healthy, especially raw fresh fruit, which happens to contain incredibly low levels of fluoride as well, especially if grown organically.
The breast milk of mammals contains incredibly low levels of fluorides, roughly the same as rain or distilled water, this is an excellent example of the importance to not expose our selves to fluorides, especially precious develop mental stages, and i’d like to add that you’re always developing, especially new neurons.
Home Water Distilling Units range in Price from 100$ which is sufficient to start drinking, to 1000$ which will be ridiculously efficient, supporting your entire Family and a Home Garden as well, although rain can be very sufficient for a home garden if unpolluted, rain water (<0.008 ppm fluoride)
If you decide to distill rain, or even reverse osmosis water, you will never have to clean your distillation unit, you will only need to drain the water from the boiling tank occasionally and replace the post filter every 2-5 months.
Fluorine is in low friction “plastics” such as Teflon which is a molecule comprised of only carbon and fluorine atoms, when Teflon Coated Cookware is Heated, it will release Carbon Fluoride Vapors into the Air or into your Food, do not use Teflon for this reason, and it is well known to cause cancer,
Aluminum is very dangerous as well, it will increase the toxic build up of Fluorides in the Human Body, avoid aluminum cookware because it aluminum has a low melting point and if scraped, bits of it will end up in your food, small amounts may boil off into water or evaporate like Teflon as well.
Aluminum is the 3rd most abundant element in the Earth’s Crust, and Fluorine is the 13th most abundant element in the Earths Crust: An average of 950 ppm of Fluoride are contained in it. Top Soils contain approximately 330 ppm of Fluorine, ranging from 150 to 400 ppm. Some Soils can have as much as 1000 ppm, and contaminated soils from industrial processes have been found with 3500 ppm.
Rain water has 0.008 ppm as I’ve mentioned, and it is what the majority of the water that the Life on this Planet has evolved to cope with, waters are further contaminated when they make contact with the surface of this planet, and the further down those waters go before they are dug up from wells for various human purposes, the more contaminated they are going to be.
Fluorine that is located in Soils may potentially accumulate in Plants, Especially the Tobacco or Tea plants, i’d like to suggest to you that you avoid exposing your body to these two plants in particular, you can find very credible information on wikipedia about them and their fluoride contamination.
The amount of uptake of fluoride by Plants depends upon the type of Plant, and the type of Soil, and the amount and type of Fluoride found in the Soil / Water.
Too much Fluoride, whether taken in from the Soil by Roots, or absorbed from the Atmosphere by the Leaves, retards the growth of Plants and reduces Crop Yields. Growing plants with well water is like pumping the fluoride equivalent of 25 to 100+ tubes of fluoridated tooth paste in with the soil throughout the plants life… that’s because well water averages a 0.7 ppm contamination of fluoride… and unfortunately that is what I assume the majority of our foods are grown with at this time.
With Plants that are Sensitive to Fluoride Exposure, even Low Concentrations of Fluoride can cause Leaf Damage, and a Decline in Growth.
Although Fluoride was once considered an Essential Nutrient, the U.S. National Research Council has since removed this Designation due to the lack of Studies showing it is essential for Human growth.
It is important to note that if Fluorides are absorbed too frequently it will cause Calcification of the mammalian Pineal Gland. The Pineal Gland is Biological Filter for Fluoride. It has the most Profuse Blood Flow 2nd only to the Kidneys, with the Highest Concentrations of Fluoride throughout the entire Mammalian Body, ranging from 20,000 ppm to 25,000 ppm.
Both the Pineal Gland and The Kidneys turn Fluorides from our Diet / Blood Stream (note: Smoking, Vaporizing, Water Vapors in the shower, Air (15-50 ppb) into Calcium Fluorides, which are safer to process out of the body. The Pineal Gland processes built up calcium fluorides to safely exit the body through urine at night, the process involves the molecule n,n-DMT which is produced naturally in the Pineal Gland, many plants contain this molecule, and this molecule is good medicine for decalcification of the Pineal Gland if taken before your sleep as concentrated dried plant matter (nearly boil plant matter containing n,n-DMT, let settle for an hour, scoop off top layer of water and dry it in a glass dish), the urge to urinate will increase and you should wake up to do so accordingly. The molecule n,n-dmt neutralizes the electronegative effects of fluorides in the blood stream by clumping together with fluorides to help them safely exit the body.
If these two filters cannot handle the Fluorides they are being exposed to, then Fluorides may end up in other calcium deposits throughout our bodies, like our Bones, which can cause Skeletal Flurosis, (which may lead to Arthritis or Joint Pains), this may even be the general cause of Arthritis.
Calcium is a very important mineral in our diet because of this process of filtration the body use’s to get rid of fluorides. Making your own milk with the use of organic almonds and distilled / rain water is a very healthy and sentient animal friendly alternative to cow or goat milk with will most likely be diluted with well waters contaminated with fluorides.
Dental Flurosis (White spots on Teeth) which may lead to Tooth Decay, is an obvious sign of wider systemic damage.
An obvious indication of a significant reduction in fluoride exposure to your body is remembering your dreams from each time you sleep, and vividly.
Another good point on this whole issue… is that you will not find any animals in the wild, with diseases or health issues, like cancer, that you find with humans, or animals kept in captivity by humans.
You are more than welcome to rewrite this information and share anywhere.
This information is updated as frequently as I can update it at DamageReport.org
You are experiencing a subjective reality, and there are many others experiencing a subjective reality as well, but we are all the universe it’s self, and so we must not activate neural pain networks.
Much Love,
– И
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That was beautiful.
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Aweee that was so beautiful and sad and I just loved it .
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