Reflections
<i>A funny fishy fiasco</i>
Three weeks, four days and eighteen hours later Mira, our three month old Betta fish, unexpectedly dropped dead in his water bowl. It was a good thing that both my six- and nine-year-old children were at school. Otherwise we would have had a very messy situation in hand.
My life partner Eva never believed in inviting anything but Homo Sapiens to her home. Being a pet lover is not one of her strong points. I used to have a cross German Shepherd (Alsatian) by the name of Danny before she came into my life. Slowly but gradually Danny was kicked out from my bed, from my room, from the kitchen, from our house, and eventually ended up in a cubicle somewhere on the roof being looked after, fed, washed by others. At the end Danny became so heartbroken that he decided to leave us indefinitely. That is what the relationship was between my better half and any four legged or single tailed pet. To her dismay, a month and a half ago her home was invaded by a three year old rabbit by the name of Bun Bun and afterwards came Mira, our three weeks, four days and eighteen hour old presently-deceased fish.
Before I have any women's liberation feminist reader separating my head from my spine, let me clarify something. Please don't get me wrong, Eva is a very loving person with a fantastic heart. One day Bun Bun, our three year old rabbit, decided to take a pleasant, non-violent evening stroll through our living room and out of curiosity managed to jump up 14 inches and landed on the couch. For an amateur photographer such as myself, timing is a very important thing. If I had a stop watch and a ruler I could have scientifically proven with a 0.05% of error margin that Eva had jumped more than 28 inches and her scream could have downed a Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning IIs single Pratt and Whitney's F135 turbo fan engine which spits out 43,000 pound-force of thrust on a full after burner with a 6.0 reading on the Richter Scale as an aftershock on yours truly. That is how much my wife stays away from any pets. As long as they are on the cover of a magazine, on the TV screen or behind cages in a zoo then all is good. Anywhere else is definitely not good.
My six-year-old daughter Megha feeds both the fish and rabbit, talks to them nonstop (and, boy, can she talk their ears off! It's a good thing fish don't have those), and reads bedtime stories to them. Especially for her the death of Mira would be heart shattering.
One hundred and fifty minutes and counting before the kids come home from school. Time to return from school is not that far away, and Mira is floating upside down in the fish bowl. Some would say it is a sure shot sign of an Armageddon. My first time and money saving choice of frying Mira for lunch didn't go quite well with Eva. So we decided to trash Mira and head towards the pet store to get a replacement as soon as possible. Time was against us and we had to move fast.
Matching the exact size and color of a fish is not an easy task at all. But I let Eva decide as I would rather have two upset people than three at home.
Sixty minutes and counting before the kids come home from school. Both guilty parents return home with their prized hidden possession, Mira gets flung inside the garbage (which is hidden for ever), bowl is washed, water is conditioned, receipt for the newcomer is destroyed and Mira II is welcomed into our family. That is when the proverbial 'poop' hit the fan. There was a case of a color mismatch and it was too late for an exchange. So we had to come up with a strategy pretty quick. If humans can get old so can fish, I guess. So for the time being Mira II has gotten older and wiser. That is the reason why he has become fairer and shorter. Good choice, eh? Kids believed it and that's the main thing.
Somewhere the soul of Mira 1 is floating around no doubt. I quietly closed my eyes and prayed for the deceased. I wonder if fish spirit can speak human? I guess I'll know it soon if it happens. I wonder how many more Miras we have to go through before the kids catch up with their extra smiling, fraudulent but ever loving and caring parents' deceiving plans.
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