How Do You Evacuate a Goldfish?

When the "Buckweed" fire traveled 20 miles southwest from Agua Dulce to Canyon Country on Sunday -- in just a couple of hours -- I was a little worried. If it kept moving at that rate, it was not impossible for it to cross over the hills into the San Fernando Valley. Not likely, but not impossible. So I started thinking about what we would have to take if we needed to evacuate.

Fortunately, this part of SoCal got through this episode all right, and life up in Santa Clarita is starting to get back to normal. But my daughter is now peppering me with an endless stream of questions about our emergency preparedness.

That's not a bad thing, but one of her concerns has me stumped: "If we had to evacuate, would we take Guessy?"

Guessy, for those of you who weren't around here two years ago, is the goldfish Megan received as a birthday party favor. He's a bigger fish now, and still swimming around in the little aquarium I bought him. And Megan loves him.

"Of course we'll take him," my husband assured her.

I don't know if he caught me glaring back at him. He seems to think that should we get an evacuation order, he will be right here with us, packing his own car with our stuff. But it's more likely that a disaster will occur during the day when he's at work up in Santa Clarita, and there is no guarantee that he can cross back down here to be with us. The responsibility to get everything and everyone out of the house safely is most likely going to fall on my shoulders alone, and the goldfish was not anywhere on my list of items we needed to take.

I'm not even sure how we would do it. Would we just unplug the aquarium and load it fish and all into the car? Or would we transfer him into a baggy, empty the aquarium and then load it into the car? Would we have enough time to do this, given that it's going to be tough enough to get the cats into cat carriers?

Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with it this time. I hope I never do. But fires are an annual occurrence in SoCal (thankfully, not ever before so widespread as the ones we've had this week). And earthquakes could hit at any time. I have vivid memories of being evacuated after the 1971 Sylmar quake and therefore know that you have to be prepared. So now, I need to have a plan for the fish.

Any ideas?