Friday, October 13, 2006

Sayonara Sushi-ga

My pet fish, Sushi, committed betta-cide by jumping out of his habitat and landing on the hardwood floor.
Taken just as this sentence, it sounds pretty funny. There is a PBS commercial that airs quite often of a gold fish doing just this; jumping out of its bowl. But the goldfish has much better luck than Sushi had. It jumps from its bowl into a large water container, a puddle on the street, off a canopy and into some other wet environment, eventually to find its way to a body of freshwater. Sushi, on the other hand, landed on a dry floor and his little fancy fans stuck to the floor.
Now the really funny part of this story is still to come; Sunkist who was in his cage while this happened and who was in full view of the fish bowl, actually saw the whole thing happen.
I was on the computer (ahem) and Sunkist really said "Fish". But I ignored him. Sunkist is always saying something and generally it isn't as benign as "fish". And unless he says something really funny, or I am interacting with him, I do ignore much of it. Why I didn't key on him saying fish which he never says unless we are visiting Sushi, I do not know.
I left the studio to check on the visiting cat who was eating in the garage and when I returned I saw something on the floor that looked rather unsavory. Actually, it looked somewhat like a piece of poo.
Not knowing where random poo would come from, I got a piece of paper to pick it up when I looked to my left and realized that the fish was not in his bowl.
I looked at the poo like object and began to discern dry eyes and even a bit of movement. I picked poor Sushi up and put him back in his bowl ... he was still alive.
It was pretty awful because he was so messed up I knew he would not survive. How does one kill a fish that is/was a pet? All I could do is flush him down the toilet like ... well, a piece of poo.
It is sad.
Sushi taught me that the sport of fishing is not as cool as I once thought it was. he also taught me that fish actually crave attention even though they are in a different environment than we are.
Poor Sushi.
I won't be getting another betta for awhile.

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