A Fish Story
To this day I remain puzzled by something.
Not exactly sure how old I was, maybe five, but I was pretty young and so were my two older sisters when we welcomed home our first family pets to grow up with. We got fish.
These were not those half-dead goldfish to be won at the carnival’s Ping Pong ball-toss game that used single-occupancy goldfish bowls for targets. (Remember? If your ball landed in a bowl with a goldfish you got to take home that scared witless and soon-to-expire thing.) Not anymore. Our family purchased “exotic” and “tropical” fish from a pet store, which I recall didn’t smell like it was properly vented, and also sold puppies.
Based on recommendations from someone who worked there, I suppose, my parents selected tiny fish for the home tank (I don’t think we ever called it an “aquarium”): two bright reddish ones, two silverish guppies, two thin neon-blue things. Each about one inch or so long. The store clerk told us that algae would become a problem in the tank but it could be controlled by including a small striped-green fish called an “algae eater,” so we bought one of those too.
They were grouped into four clear plastic bags nearly full with water, and us kids and Mom got to hold one bag carefully in our laps during the drive home. My bag was cool and in constant motion over the tops of my legs as the two reddish fish inside endured a fifteen minute sea-quake.
Live animals had been introduced into our ecosystem and before we were home each new freshwater family member had been given a name, even the one that Mom was holding, but I won’t pretend to remember any names after all this time has passed. The tank was purchased earlier, or it might have been a Christmas gift to the family from Santa, and it was full of water and fish-furnishings plus a humming electric water-filter. There was a thin metal cover over the top with a flip-up section suitable for feeding time.
The store clerk urged us to give our new pets time to adapt to our tank’s water temperature before releasing them from their temporary plastic carriers. So we talked to them and called to them by name while they floated in bags that floated in the tank, which took up pretty valuable counter space in the kitchen, the heart of the home. After all, pets are family too.
Their new glass-enclosed habitat measured (roughly) three-feet long, two-feet wide, maybe a foot-and-a-half tall. It held several gallons of water with a bed of blue, green, and turquoise gravel covering the bottom. Twin plastic green leafy “seaweed” stalks stuck up from the gravel on both sides of a plastic treasure chest with a lid that opened briefly to reveal the gold inside and release an air bubble before closing. Again it opened to release a bubble and closed, and then again and again… and I was mesmerized by those little bubbles rising like balloons to the water’s surface.
The star of our diorama, however, was a plastic deep-sea explorer complete with round diver helmet, who stood in the gravel with one arm raised in friendly greeting. If memory serves, there was no breathing hose. Though only a few steps away from the treasure chest, he would never reach it.
Finally, Mom and Dad scissored the plastic carrier bags to free our fish into the calm and waiting waters of our tank. The algae eater dropped slowly to the bottom and began sucking individual pebbles of the gravel bed. All the other fish swam around.
We stared through the glass. I don’t think the fish were interested in the treasure chest bubbles or the plastic explorer. They mostly grouped behind the seaweed and near the filter pump. We tapped the glass. Sometimes the fish changed course suddenly when we tapped. They didn’t act like they knew one another even though they’d spent time together in the bags.
When Mom sprinkled the water with stinky food flakes every fish except the algae eater swam around swallowing the slowly sinking buffet. They swam lower to hunt the flakes floating lower toward the gravel. The swirl of activity lasted about two minutes. The fish returned to swimming at a lazy pace behind the seaweed stalks. We tapped on the glass and drifted away from the tank after about fifteen minutes.
I watched the fish before dinner and again a few hours later when we turned on the electric light above the tank. It made the lightly colored pieces of gravel appear slightly lighter. The bubble-tops reflected the pale glow from above as they rose. The backs of the swimming fish were ever-so-slightly more illuminated.
Before bed, we turned out the kitchen light, leaving the tank’s overhead light shining. For a brief span of time, the miniature liquid world glowed with the kind of motion and color normally generated by the television set.
Early the next morning I saw one of the small reddish fish in the middle of the kitchen floor. When everyone was awake, Mom or Dad told us the fish was dead. They reminded us that fish need to be in the water in order to breathe and stay alive. Their story was that the fish jumped out of its tank sometime during the night.
When one of us asked “Why?” we were urged not to think about it and told simply that the reddish fish had been thrown away.
“Which one was it?”
Nobody could ever tell the difference between them. The other reddish fish was still in the tank swimming around.
One morning a month later there were a dozen baby guppies swimming everywhere in the tank. They were tiny beige blips floating and then darting forward and then floating, but they were all gone in a few days. Not a trace of their bodies was ever found.
Perhaps, a year passed. The algae eater thrived but all the other fish had died at some point. Mom or Dad routinely recovered their floating corpses and threw them away. We bought more fish so the algae eater wouldn’t be lonely. Mostly guppies and reddish fish. We’d stopped naming them after the first batch.
I’m not sure exactly how long we had fish as pets, let’s call it, roughly, a year and a half. Feeding them became a boring daily chore. At some point we stopped replacing the dead ones. When the last of them died, which I’m certain was the algae eater, we drained the tank and stored away the pump, gravel, plastic diver, and the rest of it.
To this day I remain puzzled by something. Although the tank’s lid could be flipped open, when we first brought home pets it had been agreed to—without objection—that the lid stay closed except at feeding time. Perhaps the lid had been left open by accident the night one of the reddish fish worked up the strength to jump from the water and out of the tank, leading to its inevitable ending.
But I have always been overwhelmingly convinced that the tank lid was closed that night. Many times, I’ve gone over the memory of seeing our reddish pet on the floor, at least a foot and a half away from the cabinet on which the tank stood. I’ve tried to comprehend what that fish had on its mind when it made that decision to leave home. Was it scared? Despondent? Or was it courageous and bold when it went sailing through the oxygen-rich air over the top edge of the tank, leading to its inevitable ending?
My point is I much prefer dogs as pets.
Anthony Head mostly writes about Texas.
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You're right. Dogs (and cats) are so much better as pets. This was fun to read. Thank you.
I never had a desire for a fish/tank/aquarium. your story makes me feel redeemed. give me a puppy any day!