You Were a Good Fish, Bob.
Alas, it seems that in order to make room for my new Renji art, I've gotten rid of the little image of the jumping shark to let you all know that I am writing about my fish obsession. Imagine it there, and skip if you are bored by stories of fish.
This last weekend my family and I were invited to a friend's cabin. We had an excellent time, though this is a bumper crop year for TICKS. Mason must have pulled a half dozen off himself nearly every day. (I must not smell right or be too cold. I didn't even find one.) However, it was so thick with them that we even saw a wood tick crawling on the side of the cabin. They were EVERYWHERE. It was also pretty rainy Saturday and Sunday, and the lake was still too cold for Mason to do any real swimming. However, we did kayak a lot, which was a great deal of fun... Mason particularly enjoyed the day when the wind was really strong and I was rowing and rowing and rowing and we were going nowhere fast.
Now the fish stuff--
When we came home, we discovered that our shubunkin, Bob, passed away. I know that a lot of people think that fish are boring pets, but Bob was personality plus. He might have had a past liffe as a dog or something, because he was really very playful and always met me at a specific corner of his tank whenever I came over for feeding time. He would wiggle frantically, almost like he was wagging his tail. Whenever I cleaned the tank and added water, he would swim joyfully in the bubbles created by the new water. In fact, I knew something had happened to him yesterday because, after feeding the fish in the big tank, I turned and he wasn't "wagging" in his corner.
Bob has been with us so long that he was far too large for the traditional "burial at sea." But, I dug another hole in the backyard, next to where we buried Busy Bee (the gerbil), so we placed Bob there, in Mason's garden. Mason said some lovely words over him. We had done a rather elaborate ritual for BB, and Mason particularly liked all the gifts we asked for from the Triple Goddess, so for Bob he asked that the Crone take Bob to the summerland, the Mother clean his tank responsibly, and that the Maiden provide him lots of minnows to eat. The funny part of the last one is that Bob, for some unknown reason got a little canabalistic in his old age (sometimes I called him Dexter fish) and started eating his tank mates, the white mountain minnows. All well, even sociopaths need their own kind of heaven. :-)
Gucci, gucci. Bob. You were a good fish.
This last weekend my family and I were invited to a friend's cabin. We had an excellent time, though this is a bumper crop year for TICKS. Mason must have pulled a half dozen off himself nearly every day. (I must not smell right or be too cold. I didn't even find one.) However, it was so thick with them that we even saw a wood tick crawling on the side of the cabin. They were EVERYWHERE. It was also pretty rainy Saturday and Sunday, and the lake was still too cold for Mason to do any real swimming. However, we did kayak a lot, which was a great deal of fun... Mason particularly enjoyed the day when the wind was really strong and I was rowing and rowing and rowing and we were going nowhere fast.
Now the fish stuff--
When we came home, we discovered that our shubunkin, Bob, passed away. I know that a lot of people think that fish are boring pets, but Bob was personality plus. He might have had a past liffe as a dog or something, because he was really very playful and always met me at a specific corner of his tank whenever I came over for feeding time. He would wiggle frantically, almost like he was wagging his tail. Whenever I cleaned the tank and added water, he would swim joyfully in the bubbles created by the new water. In fact, I knew something had happened to him yesterday because, after feeding the fish in the big tank, I turned and he wasn't "wagging" in his corner.
Bob has been with us so long that he was far too large for the traditional "burial at sea." But, I dug another hole in the backyard, next to where we buried Busy Bee (the gerbil), so we placed Bob there, in Mason's garden. Mason said some lovely words over him. We had done a rather elaborate ritual for BB, and Mason particularly liked all the gifts we asked for from the Triple Goddess, so for Bob he asked that the Crone take Bob to the summerland, the Mother clean his tank responsibly, and that the Maiden provide him lots of minnows to eat. The funny part of the last one is that Bob, for some unknown reason got a little canabalistic in his old age (sometimes I called him Dexter fish) and started eating his tank mates, the white mountain minnows. All well, even sociopaths need their own kind of heaven. :-)
Gucci, gucci. Bob. You were a good fish.