My dad is going to be less than thrilled that I have shared this with the blogosphere. Similarly, I was less than thrilled about being forced to eat stuffed peppers as a child. Seems fair.
About ten years ago now, my dad built a small fish pond in his backyard. It was originally a funny looking hole and has since grown into its surroundings a bit more. Every year he seems to tinker with it, adding something new or adjusting a piece here or there. Thankfully, there is a small fence around it...but let's be honest. It's only a matter of time before a grandchild ends up in there trying to grab a fish.
Speaking of fish, my dad is raising goldfish in this pond. They are pretty huge. Goldfish apparently can get pretty big when you give them enough space. Also, they are surprisingly hardy. One year, frost came earlier than expected and their little pond dwelling froze over with them inside and they had to wait for a mini thaw before my dad could rescue them and put them in their winter home down in the man cave. I am not sure if all of them survived - because my dad refuses to Facebook - but at least some of them did because there are still giant goldfish in my parent's backyard.
Simultaneously to all this serious fish business, our 12 year old daughter decided she wanted fish again. This feeling comes and goes about every six months. I am totally for fish...in tanks with filters. However, my better half has some old fashioned attachment to gravel and fishbowls. He is anti-things-that-clean-for-you apparently. No roomba for me. Anywhoo... During the last round of fish-sanity, he and our daughter bought a little fish bowl with a nemo-like background and a crazy blue backlight, presumably to scare off all the sharks that hide in our kitchen. The thing with fish bowls is they need to be cleaned. Often. By hand. And let's be honest again...I have enough things to clean.
So our daughter is told she can have more fish but she is in charge of cleaning the fish bowl and feeding them. This goes well for longer than I thought. Playing with the old strainer and the gravel and putting her fish babies in Dad's coffee mugs is wildly entertaining for about two months. We lose two of the original four and as her interest in them starts to wane I start looking forward to seeing them belly up in our kitchen. They are 10¢ fish from the grocery store - how long can they last?
FOREVER.
These are industrial strength goldfish. I don't know how they got mixed up with the normal 10¢ ones, but it must have happened. They refuse to die. Their survival is solely tied to the whims of a 12 year old...and they continue to live. Week by week, she continues to put off cleaning their tank a little longer - so every time it is smellier and nastier. She lets it develop 'algae' which seems impossible in this little bowl and is horrified when she realized she has to scrub it off. After about two months of being dragged to the kitchen to take care of these fish she had to have, she breaks...
"Can we just throw them down the toilet or the garbage disposal already?????"
Awwww...sweet music to my ears. However, we are not fish killers. Also, as much as I hate the fish bowl, we are not looking to teach our daughter that when you are tired of a responsibility you just flush it down the toilet. Wrong lesson. When you are tired of a responsibility....you give it to Grandpa.
Sooooo...we bagged up the fish and sent them home with Aunt Lucy so she could dump them in the pond.
A week later I was visiting my parents and we were sitting outside by the pond. I asked my dad how our daughter's fish were adjusting and he look at me, flabbergasted.
"Is that where they came from??? I have been telling everyone my fish finally spawned!"
Well, that's embarrassing.
No comments:
Post a Comment