My new shiro utsuri came home last night – I’m not sure if Sumiko or I was more stressed out.

Sumiko was packaged for shipment on Monday afternoon and then sat in the FedEx shipment area in Oakland, CA for about 14 hours. The last two shipments I received from Genki Nishikikoi arrived at my house within 15 hours of FedEx acceptance. I spent a lot of time on the phone with FedEx yesterday trying to ensure that I would not open up a box with a dead koi. She flew to Memphis and spent about 4 hours in their sorting facility and somehow got on a flight to Minneapolis. The sorting facility at the airport closes at 8:30 pm and her plane was due to land at 9:15 pm. The pond digger came home from work and said let’s go drive to the airport FedEx sorting facility and talk to them (did I mention that he’s a pretty smart guy?). Karen at FedEx located the shipment that had actually landed around 6:30 pm and called a manager to look for the box. Even though the facility was closed to the public, she called when they retrieved the package and opened up the office so that I could sign for the koi.

A happy ending to a potentially bad event. I’ll have to remember what the pond digger tells me routinely: “believe that good things will happen and don’t take shit from anyone.”

[Sumiko in quarantine – she’ll join the other koi in a few days. I need to get Ethel out of the larger quarantine tank so that Sumiko can swim around some more.]