"To fish, or not to fish, that is the question
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the -
slings and arrows of outrageous fish hooks -
or to take arms against a sea of fishies, and by fishing, end them…
To die, poor fish, to die – and yet ‘tis to say in that death
We end the heartache and thousand natural shocks -
fish flesh is heir to. ‘Tis what a Mini-me appeared, so hard, to wish.
To die, to sleep… To sleep perchance to swim: Ay, there’s the gills!
Fish in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when they have
Swum off this waterèd earth, must give us pause. So – it’s Laura
That makes uncertainty of a fish’s life."
To view the entire "To be or not to be" Hamlet Soliloquy click here: To Fish or Not to Fish
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You know how I said that whole thing about living in constant fear of Mini Me’s inevitable demise? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened next…
Josh is dead. Mini-me is dead. I am sad.
Josh died after I changed the water in his tank. I’ve already been yelled at enough, thank you. I KNOW you’re supposed to let it sit. I KNOW these things. But I’ve changed Josh’s water before and had no problems. I’ve given up on caring for any living creature aside from my Christmas cactus and my peace lily.
Speaking of the peace lily, it stills sits gracefully atop the ecosystem that once encased dear Mini-me (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0). And don’t start telling me you have to feed the fish even if they live in an ecosystem. Mini-me’s 2.0 and 3.0 both lived many, many months off of the plant, so there!
Anyway… Mini-me’s death has me swearing off fish entirely, for it was not a nice death, but a slow and painful one that I will never forget. I had come home from school on Wednesday (Dec. 12th, I believe) and looked into the vase to see how Mini-me was doing. I found him snuggled between two rocks, not moving.
“Oh, no!” I gasped. “He’s dead!” For real this time, I added silently, for Mini-me, much like a dog, enjoyed playing dead. I can’t tell you how many times I had come home from school thinking the fish was dead. I’d wiggle the vase and he wouldn’t move. I’d wiggle it again, nothing. Then finally the fish would decide enough mental torment was enough and would start swimming. I came to the conclusion that Mini-me was cursed, as he was a gift from my ex-boyfriend, who also turned out to be a curse.
But anyway… I come home and find Mini-me trapped. Oh, no! Okay, wait, we already did that part…
Oh yeah, I take the vase into the kitchen and remove the plant. The problem with the vase I have is that the neck is just a tiny bit too narrow for one of those nifty fish nets to fit through, so I have to sloooooowly drain out the water… And as I do so…
BOOM! The damn fish starts swimming!
Well, since I was already emptying the vase, I decided to continue and clean it out. I very carefully removed Mini-me and stuck him in a temporary home while I cleaned everything.
Once again, Mini-me had stopped moving. At this point I rolled my eyes in disgust at the fish. Then I wiggle the smaller vase that he was in. He swims a little. On his side. The damn fish won’t die! He’s obviously brain damaged because he can’t swim upright, but he’s still living. So now I have a severely handicapped fish that was dying a slow and painful death. I really can’t handle this kind of stuff. But I couldn’t just flush the fish! I knew he was dying, but I couldn’t do that just in case there was a miracle and he lived.
I put the vase and plant back together, but left Mini-me in his smaller home. I check on him repeatedly before I go to bed. When he swims, which is not often, it’s on his side… So I give him a couple fish flakes and attempt to get some sleep.
The next morning… He’s still alive. The fish is still alive. Still swimming, on it’s side, not dead. I sighed. I hated seeing the fish in such pain. But I couldn’t flush, I just couldn’t. (Note: I am obviously not the person to ask to ensure that your plug is pulled if you’re ever on life support.) There was nothing left for me to do but to go to school and tell my sad tale to my friends Kenny and Dawn.
Well, it just so happened that on that fateful Thursday night I was set to have dinner with Kenny, Dawn, and her boyfriend James. We met at my apartment before dinner where we found that Mini-me had finally passed. Past the stage of swimming on his side, of playing dead, to just really dead. But still I couldn’t flush. I made Kenny do it. Does that make me a bad Mom? I suppose the fact that 7 fish have died on me does though, huh…
So Kenny, with the help of Dawn, flushed Mini-me. Then they yelled at me about proper fish care and Dawn said I shouldn’t have kept him in so small a vase (the one he was put into after I cleaned the big vase). I felt like crying. It was at that moment that I decided to never have another fish.
The fish tank that once held Josh, Donna, Donna, and Father John now sits on my desk… Still full of water, with its one resident: Eberts, a very plastic goldfish. At least I KNOW I can’t kill that one…
(1.1.02)
