Thursday, April 5, 2012

one fish, two fish....

Our rain barrels are a sort of outdoor aquarium; pocket sized ponds.
They came with the house and it didn't take us long to think of gold fish.
My dad loved 'all creatures great and small' and having two water filled rain barrels was just too much of an invitation to ignore.
Off to the pet store we dashed and returned bearing gold fish; feeder fish actually. We saved them from a grizzly death at the jaws of who knows what exotic pet.
They pay their way by exterminating mosquito larvae and have grown very large and fat and sassy.
My father faithfully fed them and it was like watching the orca show at the aquarium. Up they zoomed, out of the depths like torpedoes when they saw a hand hover.
My grandchildren love to peer into the dark, wavering depths of the barrels and count them.
My favourite is white with a large orange patch on its back.
A few days ago, one fish disappeared.
Its companion, down deep in the shadowy bottom of the barrel. seemed reluctant to surface.
It looks so lonely in the barrel all by itself.
But should we move it?
The other barrel has three fish already.
Four seems a bit cramped don't you think?
Which of the three would we displace?
Would we be separating friends?
We did catch the lone fish in a dipper and tentatively tried a move but it swam sideways and looked like it was clutching its heart.  It is already suffering from post traumatic stress and survivor guilt. We hated to finish it off with a move. You know how that registers on the Richter scale of life stressors.
So life goes on.
Makes me think of Dr. Seuss and his One Fish, Two Fish.
Only in our case it was Two Fish, One Fish.
Hope it doesn't become None Fish.

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