A UK doctor went viral after waking up to something mysterious lying on the grass in his garden: a live goldfish. With no pond nearby, the sudden appearance of the fish left him perplexed and the story took social media by storm.
“Today I found a goldfish right on the grass in my backyard. It was alive, I think, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from,” Ben Beska posted on X this weekend. “There’s no pond nearby. So I took him inside.”
The post, which garnered 23.6 million views as of Monday morning Eastern Time, added that the fish was in fact alive.
Beska told CBS News partner BBC that he spotted the fish after looking around his garden and seeing a group of magpies, one of the most common birds in the area.
“It’s really crazy to find a fish on the lawn. I have no idea how it got into the yard,” Beska said, saying the fish started “flapping” and it “couldn’t leave him.” He believes the fish was “seconds away from death.”
He took the fish inside and placed it in an old freezer drawer filled with water.
“He started swimming, so he was alive,” he told the BBC. “I locked my cats out of the kitchen, obviously I didn’t want them to eat it, that would have been a terrible end to the story.”
The 33-year-old cardiologist from Newcastle, England, said he planned to keep the fish as a pet and named it Alice after he texted about the discovery to a friend and the message was automatically corrected from “he’s alive” to “it’s Alice”. “The fish,” he said on social media, “will also be known as “Lazarus, aka the fish that lived.” He has since purchased a real aquarium for his new companion.
The internet has apparently fallen in love with Alice and her story. Someone unaffiliated with Beska even created an X account for Alice, @alicebeska, who had numerous conversations with the doctor. After Beska posted a video showing Alice in her new tank, the fish account responded, “Well that’s not my best angle,” prompting the doctor to jokingly respond, “Shut up Alice or you’ll be back on the lawn.”
But where does this fish come from? Many believe it must have been dropped by a bird. Beska saw the group of birds just before finding the fish, but according to Ark Wildlife, fish aren’t really the magpies’ favorite. The society said magpies feed primarily on insects, small mammals, other birds, worms, molluscs, berries, grains and nuts. However, they are also known to be scavengers.
Although Alice’s true origin remains a mystery, Beska strives to make this “lucky fish” feel at home.
Grub5
