Another one bites the dust

I meant to get this post up before we killed off the goldfish, but those things really don't live long and although we began with three innocent little orange fish, as of yesterday we are down to one. Given the short and sad lives of the other two, I give this one a couple more days at best.

Kevin started the conversation about goldfish during the Summer and Cambel and Ada couldn't wait until Fall to get some fish. As promised, Kevin took them to the store and purchased three fish, some food, two containers, and some blue rocks (and if you are counting, yes, that is about $15 more than I would have spent on fish that were bound to die within the month).

Next came the process of naming the aquatic pets and we ended up with "Rainbow" in Ada's room and "Spotty" and "Dotty" sharing the water in Cambel's room. After Rainbow's refusal to eat, we placed her with Spotty and Dotty to give her some social interaction. Apparently it was too late.

She was found at the bottom of the bowl by Cambel who described her as laying flat with her eyes all bugged out. It was a sorry site indeed (who knew the eyes could come that far out of their sockets), but one that was seemingly lost on Spotty and Dotty who were merrily swimming in the now murky water.

(If you are wondering how we knew it was Rainbow who was dead, we didn't. Cambel just unselfishly assumed that it was Ada's fish and not his that had met its demise. Upon hearing the news Ada said "okay" and went on playing. She just didn't have time to really bond with Rainbow I guess).

Spotty and Dotty were quite honestly getting to be a real pain. Once the novelty of feeding them wore off, I felt that the responsibility of their welfare fell to me, although I tried to delegate the cleaning of the bowl to Kevin (my word the stench!). So it was not with great sadness that I flushed Dotty (or maybe Spotty) down the toilet yesterday afternoon--in fact, it was with a sense of relief that our fish days are nearly over.

Sorry Spotty/Dotty. It's not personal, its just that you stink and you don't really do anything but swim and quite honestly I need a little more than that to like you. Besides, fish heaven has to be a better place than the stinky cloudy bowl you are for the short (hopefully) time calling home.