Monday, October 22, 2007

My Anniversaquarium

U-J got me an aquarium for our anniversary. I LOVE aquariums and had one on and off for years. This is the biggest one I've ever had (18 gallons--I know that is not very big, but I've never had the space for a bigger one until now.)

So in honor of my new aquarium, I thought I'd tell a story....

When I was around 4 years old, I wanted a dog. So I asked my parents for one. What I got was a 10 gallon aquarium with some fish.

I suppose my mother thought that with 2 kids to raise, a husband, a house to take care of and a full time job, she didn't have time to house break a puppy and make sure it got fed (I'm sure if any mothers reading this, they are nodding their heads.)

The fish kept dying. Not all at once, but one at a time. My parents couldn't figure out why the fish were dying. My mom kept cleaning the tank thinking that something in the water was the culprit.

Finally the woman who kept me during the day could no longer stand by and let the lives of innocent fish be flushed down the toilet. She broke the code of silence sacred between babysitter and kid and told my parents what was happening.

I was catching the fish, petting them and putting them back in the tank.

I got a dog soon afterwards.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My wife and I went through an aquarium stage. We became interested in African Cichlids and eventually had plenty of these and even salt water aquariums with fish.

I grew really fond of one fish, although she wasn't really a fish; she was an octopus, although we never knew she was a she until she laid eggs.

She knew when I was about to arrive home from work...at least my wife felt she did. When I was close, she started swimming back and forth across the front of the aquarium until I came in and fed her.(she probably had a sense of time and my consistant arrival was about the time she became hungry)

She quit eating, and hid in a pot in her aquarium. Long story short: she had laid eggs. I found out she would not eat until they hatched, which was a problem since there wasn't any male to fertilize and complete the transaction. After about two weeks, I found her at the bottom of her aquarium, very weak and almost white in color. She died within hours.