Pickle is a heartwarming and amusing short partially animated film by director Amy Nicolson, who wanted to document her parents’ penchant for opening up their hearts and their home to animals with unusual medical conditions that make them unable to take care of themselves.

For no particular reason, most of the creatures in Tom & Debbie Nicholson’s menagerie suffer from unusual medical conditions. Many of them meet a tragic, unexpected demise, and ironically, they are too often the casualties of attacks by other animals. Occasionally they far outlive normal life expectancy, making them both lucky and unlucky.The film’s namesake, Pickle, was a fish born without the ability to swim. He spent his existence propped up in a sponge to keep him from sinking to the bottom of the aquarium. Pickle was lovingly tended to, along with an obese chicken, a cat with a heart condition, a non-buoyant goose, and a paraplegic possum that fancied scrambled eggs for dinner.