A Fish by Any Other Name...
Naming a pet can be difficult. The name has to fit: you can't call a solid-colored dog "Spot", and you can't name a Japanese fighting fish "Wimpy". When my then 6-year-old daughter wanted to get a fish like her grandma's betta two years ago, we dragged out the fish bowl and supplies and headed down to the pet store to find a suitable specimen. Bettas are nice because they are very hardy and nearly impossible to kill. Ours was dead within a week. We froze the carcass and returned it to the pet store, which promptly replaced it. Two weeks later, the replacement had gone belly-up as well. This continued for 6 more fish from at least two different shops. The shopkeepers couldn't explain it. We tried all sorts of different water treatments and such. Nothing helped. What was worse, we were quickly running out of names.
When the next potential fish-sicle came home from the pet store, my wife decided enough was enough with this naming business. What was the point of coming up with a name for a fish that was just going to die within a week? So she christened it "Nine" (re-read the previous paragraph and do the math).
Maybe it was the names that killed the other fish. Nine lasted a good nine months. He died a couple days after we left him with my in-laws while we went on vacation. When we got back, we gave his bowl a thorough cleaning, put in some fresh water, and got a new fish. Of course, we called him "Ten".
I have no doubt that he'll make it at least until we leave for vacation this year.
Naming a pet can be difficult. The name has to fit: you can't call a solid-colored dog "Spot", and you can't name a Japanese fighting fish "Wimpy". When my then 6-year-old daughter wanted to get a fish like her grandma's betta two years ago, we dragged out the fish bowl and supplies and headed down to the pet store to find a suitable specimen. Bettas are nice because they are very hardy and nearly impossible to kill. Ours was dead within a week. We froze the carcass and returned it to the pet store, which promptly replaced it. Two weeks later, the replacement had gone belly-up as well. This continued for 6 more fish from at least two different shops. The shopkeepers couldn't explain it. We tried all sorts of different water treatments and such. Nothing helped. What was worse, we were quickly running out of names.
When the next potential fish-sicle came home from the pet store, my wife decided enough was enough with this naming business. What was the point of coming up with a name for a fish that was just going to die within a week? So she christened it "Nine" (re-read the previous paragraph and do the math).
Maybe it was the names that killed the other fish. Nine lasted a good nine months. He died a couple days after we left him with my in-laws while we went on vacation. When we got back, we gave his bowl a thorough cleaning, put in some fresh water, and got a new fish. Of course, we called him "Ten".
I have no doubt that he'll make it at least until we leave for vacation this year.
posted by leadfoot at 6:10 PM
2 Comments:
I got a real kick out of this story when your daughter was explaining it to me this past fall. It's great that you've put it down "on paper" for posterity.
Oh, and Sweetie thought it was pretty darned funny too.
WV: "byauk" - Northeast Yankee for "uh... hyuk!"
LOL!!! I'm glad someone else has trouble naming pets. My wife and I would throw out name after name until finally I would be so fed up I would have settled on "dog" or "cat".
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