Whew!!! Close call.

Hi guys and gals. Well, the power went off here two days ago during a ferocius
storm which knocked out power to 100,000 homes and businesses in the Louisville
area. My power just came on just a while ago today. I was beginning to have
real concerns about my fish. When the power went off, of course, so did the
pump to the pond. Yesterday morning, when I got up, I went out to feed the
fish, and they were all at the surface gasping for air (the catfish had his head
almost completely out of water). I scrambled to find a way to remedy the
situation. Here is what I did. I pulled the UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
off of my computer and connected a 6 watt air pump to it, and dropped an
airstone into the pond,and ran an extension chord into the house to power the
pump on the protein skimmer for my marine tank. Unfortunately, the battery only
lasted about 7 hours, but it brought the fish around from their funk (the
catfish was still sluggish though - but then, he's two feet long, and has a
higher oxygen demand). When the batteries drained, I drove over to my brother's
house and begged him for one of his UPS's. He reluctantly agreed. I waited
until dark, then turned it on so that it would have oxygen during the night. It
ran out of power at about 3:00 this morning. When I got up at 6:30 this A.M,
the fish were ok, except that the catfish was still sluggish. At this point I
was really starting to worry, because the news was saying that the power might
not be back on for many until after the weekend. So I called the power company
and asked them who I should bill the cost of replacing my thousands of dollars
of fish to (a white lie, but what the hell. I know that they were working very
hard to restore the power - it was the worst outage we've had since the tonrado
outbreak of 1974, but I was getting desparate). An hour later, my lights came
on - thank God for that. I really didn't want to rent a generator for who knows
how many days. I think I got lucky this time. Next time, who knows?