‘I found a goldfish seconds from death in my garden - now I’m keeping it as my pet’

NHS doctor Ben Beska bizarrely discovered the goldfish lying in the grass in the garden to his home in Newcastle

Dr Ben Beska spotted the fish lying in the grass of his garden in Newcastle (Ben Beska/PA Wire)

A junior doctor has gone viral on social media after finding a goldfish lying on his grass with “no idea” how it ended up in his garden.

Dr Ben Beska, 33, from Newcastle, said he saw a group of magpies squawking in his garden on Saturday and went out to investigate when he spotted the fish lying in the grass.

Acting quickly, the NHS cardiology doctor retrieved the fish and placed it in a freezer drawer filled with water, saying it was the only large container he had to hand at the time.

Locking the fish away from his two cats, Dr Beska visited his nearest aquatic shop and purchased a tank for the fish – who has now been named Alice after a text message he sent to a friend regarding the animal autocorrected from “it’s alive” to “it’s alice”.

His initial post of the goldfish lying in the grass has earned over 16 million views on X, formerly Twitter, which Dr Beska said was “bonkers”.

“It’s pretty mad really, finding a fish on the lawn. I have no idea how it got in the garden,” Dr Beska said.

“The thing that alerted me to something being outside was the magpies squawking in the garden, so I looked out the window and thought ‘why are they doing that?’

Ben Beska says he now intends to keep the fish - he calls Alice - as a pet (Ben Beska/PA Wire)

“Then I saw this thing on the floor and I was like, ‘what the hell?’

“I went out and I was like, as if it’s an actual fish, so took a photo to send to my fiancé to say ‘how the hell is there a fish on the floor’, and then it moved – I couldn’t just leave it.”

Dr Beska said he picked up the “flapping” fish and found an old freezer drawer which he filled with water.

“It started to swim around so it was alive,” he said.

“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.”

Now with a fish tank, Dr Beska has been able to keep it safe from his cats (Ben Beska/PA Wire)

He then went to a nearby shop and purchased a tank and some chemicals, saying: “I didn’t have enough time to research and Google things, because there’s a fish in the garden.

“I put it in the tank and it’s doing much better than it was on the lawn.

“I think it was seconds from death, so it’s a lucky fish.”

Dr Beska suspected a bird had picked up the fish from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away, but he said there was no ponds close by and thought it must have travelled a “reasonable distance”.

The mystery of the goldfish has gone viral on X, with Dr Beska’s original photo gaining over 150,000 likes with more than 4,000 comments.

Dr Beska now intends to keep the fish as a pet, with plans to purchase a larger tank and possibly another fish to keep it company.