Ever since our shower faucet was leaking and caused both our bathroom walls and ceiling to grow mold and our drain to clog with mineral deposits, my roommate and I have been without a usable bathroom for over a week and have been referring to our campus’s gym facilities for bathing and going to the bathroom, awaiting even acknowledgment of the problem by our landlord.

This experience has made us very fortunate because we have once again discovered our loves of swimming while sneaking a dip whenever we use the pool showers. We’ve enjoyed a normal swim for several visits now; however, one day, our naive vision of a perfect amphibious Utopia was suddenly shattered by the discovery of this little fellow who was not also a member of our supreme species:

My roommate dove to the very bottom of twelve leagues of sea at the deep end to scare him to the surface. When this little fellow saw my roommate quickly approaching, he let out a huge gasp–which proved to be his ultimate mistake. He subsequently had to rise after letting out all if his air supply in terror, where we flopped him out of the pool using my roommate’s flippers and scooped him up in a cup.

Afraid he might escape in the interim, we brought our new friend along to Wal*Mart while we bought preparations for his new living quarters. In a kind-of reverse-Stockholm Syndrome manner, we have fallen in love with our little captive.

We now get great thrill watching him hunt flies that we capture for him.