Edward the Stingray

I wrote this probably a year ago. Just now getting around to posting it. School has kind of put a damper on my blogging opportunities. Therefore, this is the only catch-up post I will be doing. At least from 2014.

Since our stingrays have started reproducing (more to come on that in another blog post), Kevin has started to go a little crazy on the fish upgrades. We have bought four stingrays so far, but by far the most eventful purchase has been Edward.

Kevin found Edward through a guy he was acquainted with on MonsterFishKeepers.com (a forum for fish addicts, especially of the expensive, crazy, and big variety). He had a Black Diamond ray for sale in Las Vegas. One of the joys of being a nurse is that I often don’t get both Saturday and Sunday off during the same weekend, so it was fun to discover a time that I had enough days off so we could drive down and pick him up. We finally settled on April 26 & 27.

A few days before we planned to go, Kevin started to feel crummy, but since he is a person of commitment, he was empathetic that we were going to Vegas unless he was on his death bed. I was also going to be starting the gluten free portion of my lifestyle change prescribed by my GI doctor, so I was a little nervous about that because my gluten free knowledge consisted of wheat = bad, with no alternatives to know how to best eat, plus with school and work, my time to discern where to eat and what to eat were quite limited. However, I picked a few options and decided to just kind of play it by ear.

We left bright and early on Saturday, and we were greeted by a torrential downpour that followed us all the way south to the Utah-Arizona border. It was exciting. We even saw a few snowflakes.

By mid-afternoon we were in Las Vegas and looking for the house of the Stingray owner. 

The weather had improved significantly as well.

My ability to take pictures in a moving car, not so much.

Eventually, we found the guys house, which was near Kevin’s future dream home. He has a thing for palm trees.

We did our introductions, then the guy took us to meet Edward.

He was a very nice looking stingray, so we agreed we wanted to take him home with us, which was good considering how far we had driven. We made arrangements to pick him up the next morning on our way back home, then followed our host to the Golden Nugget where he was paying for our hotel accommodations. I had looked into staying here on our previous trip to Las Vegas two years ago, and after we checked in, I wished we had. It was a definite improvement over Days Inn, even if it didn’t have “free” breakfast. After a brief rest, we went to the buffet to eat (actually a nice place to eat gluten free) and people watch. I was once again reminded why I don’t drink, as we were seating by a large group of people that had a few too many to drink and were kind of obnoxious. As I am that way sober, I would hate to see what I would be like drunk. While at the buffet, I saw one or two men with long gray beards, which I thought was weird, but I didn’t really think too much about it.

Our host also provided us with tickets for The Gordie Brown Show, which was an impressionist show. For the most part it was hilarious, with some raunchiness and references to stars before my time (which went right over my head) thrown in.

After the show, we meandered down to the pool area where there was quite the impressive shark tank in the middle of the pool, complete with a slide through the tank for the ultimate experience. Sorry for the demonic eyes in the first picture, the pictures without a flash were rather dark.

The next morning we were up bright and early trying to determine where the best place for a gluten free breakfast was located. Despite the fact that Carl’s Juniors was cheaper and did have a breakfast platter with eggs and sausage or something, I insisted we go to a café with a gluten-free menu to be safe. It was good, but I do believe the gluten-free app and I have vastly different definitions of what constitutes an inexpensive meal. It did taste good though, so it was worth it. Kevin also got to take more pictures of palm trees.

After picking up Edward and packing him up in our trusty Rubbermaid (the same one we used on our Moses Lake Stingray expedition), we were on our way home. It was smooth sailing until we hit a traffic snarl between Cedar City and Beaver. We had the option of waiting it out, or taking the detour on the back roads. Fortunately, we decided to take the detour, as it ended up being a police standoff/hostage situation that lasted until well into the evening. It was early afternoon when we hit it. If we didn’t have the stress of getting Edward home safely, the detour through the small farming communities would have been enjoyable. As it was, Kevin felt horrible, and he was worried about Edward having to deal with the added stress.

We made it back home in the late afternoon, and after picking up Luna and showing Edward off to Kevin’s parents, we were on our way home to get Edward into the tank. He seemed to be doing okay, although he seemed a little bit unsure about Fatty swimming over him and all the other rays in the tank (he had been in a tank with two medium fish. We finally called it a night, congratulating ourselves on a job well-done.

The next morning as I was getting ready for work, I had a little extra time, so I decided to go check on him and see how he was doing. At first I was bewildered because I couldn’t find him, but then I realized that the random, white, round thing was him on his back. Devastated, I ran back upstairs and let Kevin know. He was even more devastated. Edward was our first ray that we have ever had die, so it was a tough blow, plus he would have been an excellent addition to our breeding stock. Oh well, you can’t win all of them.