Requiem for a Goldfish

The goldfish died.

This is the sort of trauma that afflicts almost every child who is given a "starter pet" like a goldfish. When I was a kid, the school had a fundraising "fair" and one of the dependable games was a ping pong ball toss into a square filled with small fishbowls, each with its own Real Live Goldfish. A goldfish was the most prestigious of prizes to bring home, and I remember the year we came home with two of them.

Unusually, one of the two was not gold, but black. Predictibly, we named the gold one "Golde," but in a nod to our Broadway ambitions, the black one became "Tevye."

They lived in a little bowl, and I remember some nonsense about dissolving "oxygen tablets" into the water to make it habitable. They did not last very long, probably, but as every parent knows, once something has a name, it's as real a pet as the old dog that's been around for years.

As a parent now, I marvel at the brilliance of ping pong ball toss as a revenue raiser. Even today, those little goldfish cost about twelve cents each. Ping pong balls can't be too expensive, right? (I looked them up, and they aren't--$1.59 the dozen) and after the capital expenditure of a bunch of little fish bowls (which can be bought from Michaels for about $3 each, and that's retail!). You never won the bowl, just the fish, which you carried home in a plastic sandwich bag. Sell tickets for a quarter a try, and you're in clover!

So--the Bunny wanted a fish, back when she was about 4, and we got a goldfish. Based on our joint nostalgic memories, we also bought a large glass fishbowl, and took it home.

Mistake. Surprise, surprise.

Goldfish, I learned, are not really very nice fish. They are very dirty--they poop long orange strings of poop. They seem to shed scales or something, and a fine black crud soon lines the bottom of the bowl and the water clouds up.

To properly keep a goldfish, you need a tank. With a filtration system. Which means a pump and some sort of filter, which you change. You need to change 20% of the water weekly, vacuum the gravel to keep the silt down, and you should really augment the tank with an aerator. Failing to do these things--EVERY WEEK!--results in a foul smell eminating from the water and polluting a surprisingly large area.

So, we got a tank. And the goldfish--which was silver and thus named "Luna"--was happy. Too happy. She grew. She rapidly outgrew the little tank we had gotten her. We had to upsize. But a six gallon tank only holds six inches of fish, and Luna soon outgrew that. Over the next five years, we upgraded until we had a twenty gallon tank and a filtration system with both a mechanical filter (meaning the water ran through what looked like a pot scrubber) and a bio-filter, which used some sort of organic matter (don't think about it--it's bacterial) to neutralize the ick generated by the fish. We ended up with a filter that was designed for a 30-40 gallon tank, because the fish was just that dirty.

Luna got huge. And the larger she got, the more apparent it was that goldfish are carp. Shiny carp, with glittery scales, but still carp.

But the Bunny loved Luna, and took excellent care to make sure that she was properly fed. I got to do all the cleaning--no surprise there. And Luna thrived. For five years. Sure, I got casual about cleaning the tank, and there were emergency rescue events where the water was so bad that Luna was gasping for air at the surface, and I had to do massive make-up cleanings. But she still thrived. And grew. And grew.

Then, one evening, the Bunny went into her room to get her pajamas, and there was Luna, lying peacefully dead at the bottom of the tank. The Bunny cried, and refused to go back into her room. It was time for the inevitable, if long postponed, pet funeral.

But--oh my God--can you really flush a five pound fish? This fish was so big that if you had pulled her from the lake you could have kept her. Many a lake cabin meal was made from fish smaller than Luna. She had outgrown all the aquarium nets we had ever gotten, and was nearly big enough to need her own casket.

And suddenly, I couldn't do it. I--who had stayed with both my elderly dogs as they ended their lives. I--who had dealt with the three parakeets who died within weeks of their acquisition. I--who had respectfully buried bettas and guppies and mollies in the garden. I--who had dealt with the wild rabbit that decided to die underneath my roses.

I--got creeped out.

I mean, she was huge! An enormous fish! A fish outside the parameters of pet sized, and well into sport trophy size. I just couldn't do it! There is a reason I don't fish! Or even eat fish! Especially not fish that lie there and look at me with their damned lidless eyes!

Bless his heart, Mr. Sweetie--the lad who spent all his summer childhoods fishing in the lake with his brother--he took care of it. I think I owe him one.