Pets On The Verge: Part Two

After my initial fish episode, one would think I had learned my lesson...

About seven years ago, my husband was traveling out of the country a lot for work and it always threw the kids into a tailspin. This particular trip's goodbye evoked hysteria and running down the street behind his car in tears. The usual medicine, a movie with a huge popcorn covered in butteroid with sugary soda, did nothing to assuage the pain. On the way home, the tears started again, accompanied by the whimpered pleas for a pet.

I had resisted for years, knowing that I just don't have time for walking, feeding, poop scooping, and whatever else. I already had 5 people's needs to meet and adding a pet just didn't do it for me. But... we stopped at the pet store. One small bowl and two goldfish later, we came home. Note that I wasn't going for a full tank and tropical-potentially-cannibal fish this time.

As you can imagine, Gumby and Pokey were the highlight of the house... for about a week. But hey, they don't require a lot of care and how long do goldfish live, anyway? Yeah. The fish are still here.

In their too small bowl with rocks and a replica of the Parthenon, they continue to swim in circles. It's my fault. I let the bowl deteriorate until it resembles Lake Ontario before I clean it. I think I have boosted their resistance. Gumby has cataracts and Pokey is no longer gold - apparently even goldfish go gray in old age, but they continue to be quite spry, splashing constantly.

One morning recently, my husband discovered Gumby on the floor. He had made an escape attempt! Once deposited back into "the Lake" he was fine, but we have to keep the bowl covered with the sandbox sand strainer to deter any more jailbreaks. Was it a "Finding Nemo" moment or a suicide attempt? I'm not sure, but I cleaned the bowl and replaced the Parthenon with the Rocky Mountains. Hey, even I get crazy when I need a vacation...

L

Pets on the Verge, Part One

I have nothing against pets. I grew up with cats and dogs and loved them. As an adult, before kids, I was working and didn't want to take on the responsibility of a pet. Once I had kids... well, I had kids. Who needs a pet when you have three little boys running around in various stages of potty training (which often evolves into potty mouth - a topic for another day)?

When my kids were very little they saved their birthday money for an aquarium. We went to the pet store and came home with a ten gallon tank and all the requisite paraphenalia, along with ten tropical fish.

Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves in a situation that required us to move to Boston for the summer. I dutifully asked the pet store what to do and triumphantly purchased several vacation feeders and handed them to my neighbor.

My neighbor did as instructed and dropped a feeder into the tank once a week. She told me that it was getting green in there, but I knew she had three kids and I was NOT going to ask her to do anything more than she was already doing.

Upon arrival home, I discovered long, flowing moss and algae. It was really disgusting. I could only locate two fish in the mess. I scooped them out into a plastic container and took the tank outside where I proceded to scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub... you get the idea. When I came inside for some more paper towels, I found the two survivors on the counter next to bowl I had placed them in. With a sigh of disappointment tainted with relief, I flushed them.

That's when the little black one started to swim. Against the current. Suddenly it was all clear. This little bugger had killed and eaten his roommates! That's why I couldn't find any other remains! And on the counter, the other fish was trying to escape a similar fate and the black one followed him over the edge in a homicidal, carnivorous rage! Oh, he was a devil fish, no doubt. So I flushed again.

Maybe it was a little cruel, but I was not taking that evil deviant fish back into my home... besides, he'd been in the toilet... ewwwwwwwwww! So I flushed again, and that damn malignant beast kept swimming against the current! I was getting really creeped out.

It took four or five flushes to send him away. I felt a little guilty at the time, but justified it as the death penalty for a fish who had obviously killed nine others, and most likely cannibalized eight of them. The guilt eased over time, but I continued to have a twinge now and then. Thank God for Finding Nemo. Thanks, Walt Disney, for telling me that "all drains lead to the ocean".

The only problem is that if that fish is in the ocean... Jaws doesn't seem all that scary anymore.








L