I was thinking about this the other day and it suddenly occurred to me that the strangest thing we ever lost was a fish! When we were in the Far East, we ‘inherited’ an Asian albino catfish from a friend who was posted home, together with its rather large tank. We came home to our apartment one day to find the tank empty. Searched the room and found nothing! My son, who had just started walking, had by this time wandered off to find something more interesting than panicking parents to watch and we heard him babbling away to himself in the bedroom next door - at the catfish, under my dressing table! It had crawled, or whatever catfish do, all that way and was on the point of expiring having started to dry out. They could, it seems, survive out of water as long as they don’t dry out. It was also missing some of its skin. DH put it back in the tank and we awaited the inevitable. Later in the day, our Chinese grocer came with a delivery and told him the tale. He said they can jump quite high in pursuit of insects and that is probably how it got out of the tank. He was very surprised at the distance it crawled, though. He said they were not really suitable for aquaria and offered to take it to the pond in their village. So we jumped at the offer and said goodbye to it the next day! We often wondered whether ‘take it to the pond in their village’ was a euphemism for ‘take it home for supper’ but we didn’t pursue that train of thought! I remember, as a child, having goldfish that jumped out of their bowls in suicidal desperation, but we always knew where to look for those - down the back of the china cabinet!