Goldfish

We spent a week recently in Alabama, visiting my husband's relatives. I remembered to hold the mail, the newspaper, kennel the dog, make the hotel reservation, pick up UNC t-shirts for the Alabama cousins, and pack for the 6 of us, but forgot to have someone feed the goldfish.

Three days into our trip, a friend asked to borrow something from the house. I gave her the details of getting into the house, and asked her to check on the fish to see if they were still alive, and if so, could she feed them. If not, she was granted full permission (and immunity from prosecution by my kids) to flush them. I was secretly hoping for the latter.

Brennan won the largest of our fish, Violet, four years ago this month, at a church fair. I'm sure you know the game; toss the ping pong ball into a fish bowl and you win a goldfish. Both Brennan and Brady won fish that day. Violet has turned out to be the Black Widow of goldfish. The other fish that we pair up with her, have all died of mysterious causes within a few days of being placed in the same tank as her. We've had to send 7 of Brady's fish to a watery grave (8 if you include the Beta fish we got in a separate bowl to avoid another homicide)...First it was Victor, Victor 2, then Steeley (named for my Hometown Steelers), Steeley 2, Dottie, Gus, Constant...you get the picture.

The girl at PetSmart refused to sell me another 19 cent goldfish because in her estimation, "selling me another fish would be the same as sending a fish home with someone to be murdered." I am not making this up. I almost asked her to see her PETA card, but thought better of it and left. I returned to buy another fish a few days later when she wasn't working.

So, Violet (who has gone from a 1inch long goldfish to a 5 inch long monster) had been living happily with Constant and Spunky (Nora's addition to the tank) for a few months, but I could sense that trouble was brewing. Violet was on the prowl again. Constant succumbed first, happily swimming one afternoon, the next morning, limp and stuck to the bottom of the filter tube.

Spunky, true to his name, must have had a little more fight in him, but the outcome was much more gruesome. When my friend came over and checked the fish while we were away, both fish were fine. She fed them and two days later we came home. I peeked into the kids bathroom, which is where we keep the fish tank, to see how they were doing and only could see Violet. My heart sunk. My first thought was, "How would Nora deal with her first loss?"

My second thought was, "Where is the other fish?" I couldn't see it floating at the top, nor was it stuck to the filtration tube... I flipped on the light and looked more closely. There at the bottom of the tank were Spunky's remains. Picked clean. Not only had Spunky died, but all that was left of him resembled the little fish bones that you see in cartoons. It was a perfect fish skeleton, with just the faint remnant of a tail fin.

Two days after our return, we got Brady a hamster. He's been working on demonstrating responsibility for a long time to show us that he's ready to have his own pet. Here's hoping for better luck with hamsters that he had with fish. As for Violet, she has a long was to go before she earns herself another tank-mate. I have always heard of guppies eating their young, but cannibalistic goldfish?