How did a live goldfish come to be found on a Newcastle lawn? It is hardly the mystery of the century but it has confounded social media users ever since Ben Beska, a junior doctor, posted on X, formerly Twitter, about his unlikely animal rescue.
Beska was alerted to the fish after spotting magpies squawking over something in his garden.
After discovering it was a goldfish – and “seconds from death” – the NHS cardiology doctor scrambled into action, putting the “flapping” fish in an old freezer drawer full of water, the only receptacle big enough.
“It started to swim around, so it was alive,” he told the PA news agency.
“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.”
His initial post of the goldfish lying in the grass has earned over 18m views on X, formerly Twitter, which Dr Beska said was “bonkers”.
He has since bought a proper tank for the fish, named Alice after a text message he sent to a friend regarding the animal autocorrected from “it’s alive” to “it’s alice”.
“I put it in the tank and it’s doing much better than it was on the lawn,” Beska said.
“I think it was seconds from death, so it’s a lucky fish.
“It’s pretty mad really, finding a fish on the lawn. I have no idea how it got in the garden.”
He suspected a bird had picked up the fish from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away, but he said there were no ponds close by and thought it must have travelled a “reasonable distance”.
The mystery of the goldfish has gone viral, with Beska’s original photo gaining over 150,000 likes with more than 4,000 comments.
On going viral, he said: “Some of the comments are quite funny and about 1,000 people said they thought a bird dropped it.”
One X user has even gone as far as creating a separate account for the fish, with the username alicebeska.
One post on the account for the fish reads: “Such a wild day, booked one of those journeetrips and wound up on some northerner’s lawn? I would like a refund please.”
