| by Ashley Mason | 12/11/06 | 166 views |
Most pet fish are found floating at the top of the tank when they die, but not my fish. Six fish, and six different, horrible deaths! This is my true story: Confessions of a repetitive fish killer!
When I was young, I begged my parents to get me a dog. Their first response to my plea was, “How about we get a fish? And if you can take care of it, we will think about getting a dog.”
Of course, I wasn’t happy with this answer, but I thought, “What would be so hard about caring for a fish?” I would have a dog in no time! Little did I know that this would mark the beginning of my fish-killing spree.
Goldie was the first victim. When I got home from school one day, I walked over to feed Goldie and saw he was stuck under the seashell I had added to his tank. Goldie sat at the bottom of the tank, his gills moving slower and slower as the minutes passed by.
Looking back on it, I should have just stuck my hand in the tank and pulled the seashell out, but I was too grossed out to save his life. What if I touched him?!
Goldie continued to suffer, stuck under the shell, until he died.
After Goldie’s death I swore I would never get another fish, but during my freshman year of college my roommates and I wanted a pet, so a fish it was.
Two fish, actually. We named them Oliver and Rudy. Oliver’s life was short-lived. When my roommate and I got back from class one day she yelled for me to come over and see him.
“Oh my gosh, our fish is doing flips,” she said. I knew that this was the end of his life, thinking he would only last for a couple more hours. But no, Oliver suffered for 2 days, doing unceasing flips.
When he finally died, we buried him under a tree in the front of Rodney C. Rudy continued living for a week after Oliver. One day I saw a slimy film floating on the top of the tank.
I realized that my roommate, who used excessive amounts of hairspray, had gotten it into his tank. Rudy died a day after, but, hey! It wasn’t my fault this time! Maybe my fish killing curse was over…or maybe not.
I didn’t get another fish until my junior year. This time I went all out. I got a new tank, a new filter, made sure to ask the pet store employee exactly what needed to be done to keep my fish alive, and bought two more fish. I named my new fish Bert and Ernie.
I was sure that if I followed the pet store’s advice these fish would live for a long time, but once again, I was wrong. I woke up one morning and went over to feed Bert and Ernie, and saw Bert swimming around, but Ernie was nowhere to be seen.
It was then that I saw his orange tail sticking out from behind the filter. The filter had sucked him in while I was sleeping. By the time I unplugged it, Ernie’s lifeless corpse floated to the top of the tank.
Bert lived much longer than Ernie did, but his day eventually came, and his story is more like a nightmare. I’m sure everyone has heard of fish getting stuck in a filter, or under a rock, but I am positive that a fish has never died like Bert.
One night after getting out of the shower I went to feed Bert, when I saw, staring up at me, a bloody eye socket with no eyeball attached! I yelled for my roommate, who came running into my room. Was I really seeing this? Can a fish’s eyeball really just fall out? Bert was more sluggish than his normal self, but other than that he seemed fine.
My roommate confirmed that his eye was definitely missing. Our first reaction to all of this was: where is the eye? We looked over the tank, and then saw it at the bottom, staring back at us. I thought for sure Bert would die within a couple days but he lived with one eye for a couple more weeks, and was renamed One-Eyed Willie.
My most recent victim was Jagermeister. I got Jagermeister a week after school started this year. I put him in a tank with a filter that no longer worked, and promised myself that I would just clean the tank when it started to get dirty. That day came about two and a half weeks after I got him.
I put him in a separate bowl while I cleaned out the tank. When I went to scoop him up and put him back in the tank I noticed he was swimming on his side, bad sign! I guess when I was trying to scoop him up I hurt his fin. I put him back into the tank, hoping everything would be ok, and carried it into my room.
Shortly thereafter, I noticed he was no longer swimming on his side, but floating upside down. I tried to flip him over, but as soon as he was right side-up he would flip back over. He floated upside down for four hours and then finally died.
You might think that my knack for killing fish is purely accidental, but I am not the only one in my family with the unfortunate talent of killing fish. Our fish tank at home is known as “the death tank.”
It seems that any fish that goes in, never comes out alive. Yes, I know fish don’t live long, but is it a coincidence that my uncle’s fish, who was five years old, died a week after he was put in our tank? Or that the 20-plus fish that my dad has bought have all died within a month?
For now, I have given up on trying to keep a fish alive. The water has been taken out of the tank and I refrain from buying a fish when I drive by the pet store. I have finally realized I am just not cut out to own a fish.
I have, however, had much better luck keeping my dog alive, who is now nine years old. Yes, my parents still got me the dog that I begged them for, despite my lack of ability to care for a fish. Maybe one day I will attempt to own another fish and keep it alive, but until then I will stick to dogs.
     
|
University of Delaware
)
