© Kevin Hill, North Shore News , North Shore News
Lynda Taylor (left) and Cindy Wilkinson with 'Lucky.' Their friend found it in Wilkinson's backyard.
It's a flying fish tale worthy of
Finding Nemo. But in a bizarre twist, this unusual story of three North Vancouver women trying to reunite an exotic fish with its owner started on land - with a fish that fell out of a tree.
Cindy Wilkinson got home on Monday to find a voice message from her friend Jan Bailey.
"She said, 'The strangest thing just happened. A fish just fell out of our cedar tree on to the ground.'" Bailey, who lives near Third Street and St. David's Avenue, had seen the fish make a dive worthy of an Olympian in her backyard. Her husband went out to investigate, and found the piscine drop-in covered in cedar needles but - incredibly - still alive.
It was an unusual looking fish, reddy orange and about 25 centimetres long. Bailey hauled out an old aquarium, filled it with water and put the fish inside. Then she called Wilkinson, who promptly called Lynda Taylor, another friend who knows her fish and has a big koi pond.
"I said, 'There's a fish that just fell out of a tree,'" said Bailey.
The friends decided some Internet sleuthing was in order.
A quick check showed the mystery fish was probably a cichlid, an aquarium fish native to South and Central America and usually kept in indoor aquariums.
Wilkinson and Taylor took it to a local pet store and had its identity as a Midas cichlid con-firmed; it's described online as a "rather robust fish."
Comment: Below are the links to the original Woodbury sighting and the Bantam Lake sightings discussed above.
UFO sighting by several witnesses in Connecticut
Trooper, motorist: Mysterious object fell from sky
The Mystery of the "UFO," or Meteorite That Fell Into Bantam Lake May Never Be Solved
Mysterious object fell from sky in Litchfield, Connecticut