A Fish Story

I have a friend who always has hilarious strories about her kids. Just normal everyday events that just seem extra funny to me for some reason. Same goes for my sister. Every time I talk to her she has some crazy thing that just happened to her or her kids and I laugh for an hour at her story. Like the time she used her bluetooth headset for the first time and she freaked out in the parking lot at work, because it vibrated on her ear and she thought there was a bee in her hair. (Sorry, Jenn - had to tell that one!) This story is like that. There's nothing super dramatic, but it's the kind of thing that happens and I think, "Do things like this happen to everyone or just me?" So anyway, here's my fish story.
We have an aquarium. Its pretty big - about 29 gallons. A couple of months ago, our bottom feeder died. We waited several weeks before we finally decided we better get a new one. I took Andrew to the pet store, and we picked out the "algae eater." Very fun. This was about two weeks ago. The water and the tank were very green, so we treated the water, and the fish began to do his job- the glass began to get clearer. About a week later (last Tuesday), I found 2 neon tetras dead. My husband commented on how strange it was that they both died on the same day. I agreed, so I went to the tank to really take a good look. If you know anything about aquarium life, you might have heard of a disease called ich (pronounced "ick"). It is a parasite that gets under the scales and looks like little white specks on their body and tail. It is no problem if you catch it early, but I clearly had not paid close enough attention to our tank. Every fish was covered from nose to tail in it. They looked a little bit sugar coated, including their eyes and a couple of them were just kinda floating along - not dead, but not swimming happily, either. "OH NO!" I told Phil. "I think we're too late - all of these fish are going to die." Sure enough, the next morning I got up, and three more fish were dead. One was the bala shark. The picture above came from Wikipedia, but ours looked just like that. I have had that fish for about 8 years. I didn't measure it, but I estimate it was a good 5-6 inches long. The thought of pulling that sucker out of there made my skin crawl, but it had to be done. I thought if I just scooped it up into the bathroom trash can I could just dump it in the toilet and not even have to look at it. Well, it wasn't quite that smooth. It took several tries to get this thing through the narrow opening in the lid of the tank. I also had to scoop two other fish out (they, fortunately were much smaller), so the whole time I was whining, "Eew...Eew...Eew..." Andrew was looking on this whole time, apparently very concerned about where we are taking the fish. I run in to the bathroom with the trash can and try to get them all into the toilet with out looking at or touching them, again whining, "Eew...Eeew...Eew..." Just before I flush Andrew looks up innocently and says, "Mommy...Shishy go potty?" Trying to keep from laughing at him, I say "Yes, baby. Say bye-bye, fishies." As I reach over an flush the toilet, he looks in and says, "Bye-bye shishy, see you!" I laughed at how cute that was, washed my hands an went on with my day. The next day, two more dead fish. I avoided scooping them out the whole day. I got busy shampooing my carpet. When I was done with the carpet, I went in the bathroom to dump the dirty water down the toilet, and when I lifted up the seat, there it was. The eyes of that dead bala shark were staring up at me from the opening in the bottom of the toilet. I was HORRIFIED. Never did it occur to me that the fish wouldn't FIT! I must be WRONG! So, I flushed again. Nope, he popped back up. EEW ... EEW... EEEEEW! Thank God He blessed up with a house with three bathrooms! About two hours later my husband came home, and in what I'm sure was the worst whiny-wife-voice he ever heard, I told him of my plight. "I'll take care of it, " he assured me. That night before bed, I asked him if he got the fish. "No," he said, "I'm going to have to find something to grab it with first." The next morning when I got up, Phil was already at work. I peeked in the toilet to see if it was gone. Still there. EEEEEW! All day I tried to psych myself up enough to pull that fish out of the toilet with a pair of little plastic tongs that I found. I just couldn't do it. I laughed at my ridiculous self at one point, and thought I might go in and take a picture of the fish peeeking up from the toilet to share on my blog, but I couldn't even do that. I kept that door closed all day and used the other bathroom. At the end of the day my husband finally came to my rescue, and removed the poor thing. He put it in several layers of plastic grocery bags and put it in the trash can in the garage, awaiting the next pick up day. My hero.
Sadly, all of the fish are now dead, including our new bottom feeder. Andrew, I'm sure, doesn't understand this at all, but simply states, "Mommy, shishy go bye-bye."
Yep. Bye-bye, shishy.