Big sad news. One of our fish committed suicide last night. I speak the truth.
Saturday, Shane gave me a hard time and I finally cleaned the fish tank for the first time. Shane's been bugging me to do it for months, since he always does it, and he hates doing it, and I'm the one that loves the fish so much. (Basically, he is waiting for all the fish to die so he won't have to clean the tank anymore. Since I protest, he has asked me to assume the cleaning responsibilities. As if I don't do enough around here.)
So I took our little blue tetra's suicide pretty personally. He didn't like my cleaning job.
Oddly, it was his second kamikaze attempt of the night. His first flop-out was when I was at the fridge, and he flopped onto the kitchen counter amid all the newly cleaned baby bottle stuff. Yeah. They all got seriously cleaned again.
Then, when I got up to feed the bebe sometime later that night, during the MASSIVE thunderstorm, Shane came out to get some water and I asked him to count the fish. He said... "I only count four." I was hoping he was kidding. We had FIVE fish...
Nope. He found the corpse on the floor near Gabby's water dish. It's like the fishie was hoping to leap from water to water. Question: If he had made it into Gabby's water dish, would he have lived? Or would she have eaten him?
Another nail in the coffin, you should know, is that at the beginning of the week we had SIX fish. There was another casualty this week in a separate incident. You know, natural causes. Not suicide.
AND, the last nail in the coffin (there are so many), is that this isn't the first time we've had a fish attempt suicide. This is just the first time a fish has succeeded. Maybe we should take this as a hint to put the lid back on the fish tank? (This is all particularly relevant since I just read the movie spoiler for Shyamalan's The Happening, which is all about people committing suicide.)
sigh
Shane was reading an article recently about the hardest parts of parenthood, and one of them was explaining mortality to your children. Whether it be grandma or a goldfish, it's tough. I'm not looking forward to that. I have a hard time with it myself! Thankfully, Shane tried to be positive. He took care of our fish's remains and so kindly called it, "sending the little guy to the hospital in the toilet."
Yeah. One of these days I'll just go buy some new fish and will feel worlds better.
4 comments:
He didn't send him to the hospital in the toilet, he sent the fish to the ocean. Remember "all drains lead to the ocean and to freedom." This is per the finding Nemo movie... how could you forget? :)
Jason had to flush my beloved beta down the toilet around Christmastime...it was a little tragic for me, but small babies and small fish don't seem to mix. Small fish get abandoned and languish in cloudy water I found. Sorry, though, I'm sure you did a lovely job. In fact, you probably did SUCH a good job, that the little fellow felt invigorated and was jumping for joy, and accidentally jumped too high. But you know, all drains lead to the ocean, right? Burial at sea.
that's a nice way to look at it... jumping for joy... thanks for that perspective. it's sad to lose a "friend" even if they are fish. I've said goodbye to two betas over the years as well. *sob*
Our beta tried to commit suicide once...but I really couldn't blame him. He was being fish-sat by our neighbors and the little girls put all of their fish related things around the bowl so he wouldn't get lonely. I think he was just trying to escape the giant sharks that were attacking him! (or trying to join them in the larger fish bowl?) Hope the rest of your fish are content enough to stay in the bowl!
Post a Comment