Years ago, as an experiment, we bought a bunch of feeder fish from Liam’s in Chinatown and distributed them among our rain barrels. The idea was that they would eat any mosquito larvae and maybe fertilize the water a bit. A lot of them died almost immediately, but some of the ones in the rain barrels that were in the shade survived. They have lived for at least five years in those barrels, with sporadic feeding, through all kinds of weather, and we respect them for that.
We have to move the rain barrels to do this house-lift, so it was my job yesterday to empty them by watering our unseasonably dry garden. I got to near the bottom of one with a fish in it and went to check on it so we could try to pull it out before it was drained, and as I was tilting the barrel to get a better look, a heavy garden tool slid off the top of the barrel and clunked inside with a loud thump, and it seemed to me like it had clobbered the poor fish.
I was distraught! After all this time, to be crushed so quickly and unjustly by a random tool! I was hollering and wailing, and Morgan came quickly to see what had happened. He was equally dismayed.
I ran to get a net, and he fished out the little orange body, which was–miraculously!– still alive. We quickly plopped him in the other shaded barrel with the two fish already in residence, and he began swimming around seemingly unharmed.

I have been forbidden to empty this barrel, which is fine with me. We don’t know what to do with these guys now, we feel responsible for them. We don’t have any perfect shade to put them in away from the house… But we’ll figure something out.