A Fish Tale

Anthony and I have never seriously considered getting the boys a dog. Don't get me wrong, we love dogs, however we don't want the hassle and cost of taking care of something else. We don't want to have to worry about the messes a dog can leave in the yard nor do we want to have to find a place to take it if we want to go somewhere for an extended period of time. So we started the boys out with a fish. Her name was Goldie and she was a Goldfish. We quickly realized we needed an algae eater so we added it to the tank as well. When the algae eater wasn't doing it's job we purchased two snails. When all three (1-algae eater and 2-snails) of them died we tried a crawdad. After the crawdad crawled out of the tank, yes, it crawled out of our fish tank, it was time to try something else. We now have "Robinhood" which is a type of an algae eater but he's bigger then the ones we've had before and there is a reason for this which I'll get into later.

When the boys were younger, each goldfish we purchased was the traditional golden color. After Goldie (#8) died, Anthony took the boys to Wal-Mart to purchase their next fish. They came home with three goldfish--the first one was orange, which they named "Nemo"; the second one was red, which was "Lighting McQueen" and third one was gray, which they named "Bruce". If you remember, Bruce was the Great White shark on Finding Nemo. I hadn't seen a gray goldfish before, but they were happy so I was happy.

Lighting McQueen died fairly quickly after we got him and Nemo followed a month or two later. Bruce however has been around for 3 years! We purchased him from Wal-Mart for $0.25 (yes, twenty-five cents!) 3 years ago. None of our other fish have even come close to living that long.

About six months after bringing him home, Bruce changed from a gray goldfish to an orange goldfish. I'm not sure what happened but over time, his color started changing. In fact, he ended up being a very bright orange. Not only did he change colors but he also grew. When we first brought him home, he was probably an inch long. Three years later, he was well over 8 inches long! He was a big fish!

At one point, we were having trouble with algae in our tank and I had asked for help from the "fish lady" at a local pet store. When we were discussing our tank and the issues we were having she asked me how big our goldfish was. I'm not good with estimating and like most things in my life, I tend to down play and underestimate things so I held out my fingers and show her how big I thought Bruce was. She recommended I go with a smaller type of algae eater so I took her advice.

It wasn't until I got home and took a good look at Bruce that I realized I wasn't even close to telling her how big he was. Our goldfish was HUGE! Anthony transitioned the new fish into the tank just like she told me however two days later I found Bruce sitting at the bottom of the tank with the algae eater's tail hanging out his mouth!! Bruce had eaten the algae eater!!

Luckily, the fish lady had told me that if the smaller algae eater didn't work out to bring it and the receipt back and I could get a refund/credit. I was so embarrassed to tell them our goldfish had eaten the algae eater. The fish lady also suggested that we think about putting Bruce in a goldfish pond since he was so big. I left the store with Robinhood, a $7 algae eater, which has worked perfectly. Bruce and Robinhood have been good mates from the beginning. Robinhood hasn't tried to eat Bruce and Bruce's mouth wasn't big enough to eat Robinhood.

Notice the seashell in the background and how big Bruce is compared to it.

 Robinhood is on the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fast forward, several years to June 20, 2011. Anthony was out of the state for work, the older three kids were attending Vacation Bible School at our church and Robert was home "helping" me pick up the house. I was hanging shirts in the closet when I heard him say, "Bruce is sleeping". It took me several seconds for it to sink in and I thought to myself, that can't be good so I turned around to find Bruce on the bottom of the tank with his fins down. Not thirty minutes later he was floating, belly up but still breathing. I knew it was only a matter of time before he would die.

So I began to plan, because I'm a planner. Bruce was 8 inches long at least and who know what his girth was. I had decided months earlier two things were going to happen 1.) he was going to die while Anthony was traveling and 2.) he had gotten to big to flush down the toilet. And with my luck, if I tried, he would clog it and I would either have to plunge it or even worse I would have to make the embarrassing phone call to the plumber. Can you imagine what that conversation would be like!?!  You tried to flush what!?

So, as our goldfish was dying, I began trying to figure out what I was going to do with the darn thing. My options were 1.) I could take the risk and try to flush him, 2.) I could dig a whole in our yard or 3.) I could throw him away in the trash can. I'm not a risk taker nor do I like to be embarrassed so flushing him was not an option. I couldn't bring myself to throw him in the trash. I realized that it would be the easiest thing to do, but seriously, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

To me, throwing him away in the trash was sort of like me signing my organ donor card. Hear me out, I am an organ donor. I'm proud to be an organ donor, when the good Lord calls me up, the Doctors can have every organ and tissue that they can possible take from me however I do not want to donate my eyes. Some of you may not understand and I honestly can not give you an answer but I do not want my eyes to be donated (not that anyone would want them, I have astigmatism, higher then normal eye pressure and bad eyesight) but still. There was just something about throwing Bruce away that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

So that brought me to my third option which was digging a hole in our yard for the fish. I have never had to dig a hole for an animal. I don't know that I have ever dug a hole for anything for that matter. Was I really going to go out into my yard at 10:00 pm to dig a hole for a goldfish? So as I thought about that for a while, different versions of that plan came to mind...I have a brother-in-law that lives a couple minutes away. Should I call him to bury the fish at 10:00 at night? hummmm...I would hear about that one for years. Should I ask my neighbor whom I barely know to bury the goldfish at 10:00 at night? hummm...maybe...but do I really want to stand and watch a man that I barely know bury a goldfish... not really.

After a few hours of processing it all I decided that I would strategically place the fish in the trash can and then I would remove the bag and immediately take it outside. I had also decided that I would need to do it while the kids were asleep. Robert, who is 2 years old, has the potential of making the whole situation worse. Once all the kids were asleep I took our kitchen trash can into their room. At that point, I decided I wanted to measure Bruce to see how long he was so I went back to the kitchen to try to find a paper plate. All I could find were dessert plates so I grabbed two b/c I knew he would be longer then one and I didn't want his tail hanging off and touching things or dripping fish tank water everywhere.

We had a fish net but he was too big to scoop him out so I decided I would have to use the net like a shovel and he would have to hang off each end. Everything was going perfectly, the kids were snoring, I had raised Bruce out of the tank on the net with one hand and placed him on the paper plate with the other when all of a sudden I had a Sandra Bullock clumsy moment. Sure enough, his tail was hanging off the plate so as I went to bring the other plate under his tail I must have moved my hand and Bruce slid from one end of the plate to the other which was by my finger. I should have known Bruce was going to be slippery and we all know those paper plates are and two slippery surfaces aren't a good mix. Bruce touched my thumb, I did a silent scream and dropped Bruce into the trash can below! 

Although I didn't plan for it to occur like it did I couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Now my thoughts were "please don't let me see him in the bag." As I pulled the trash bag out of the trash can I kept repeating to myself, please don't let me see him in the trash bag. Thankfully, my Sandra Bullock moment was over! Bruce was somewhere in the bag of trash and I couldn't see him not that I was looking for him but I did a quick glance as I was walking the bag out of the house. I took the bag outside to the trash can and breathed a sigh of relief. Once again I did something I thought I couldn't do myself.