Pets - Part II
I began the last post talking about gifts for kid’s birthdays. Please allow me to continue. My youngest recently turned six. Before her birthday, her mother and I discussed our options. Teddy bears? She’s got too many. New clothes? Yes, she needs them but there’s nothing tantalizing about opening a three-pack of Old Navy long sleeves. Bracelet construction kit? No, those things have more beads and trinkets than a hippie flea market. We’ve ruined at least six vacuum cleaners sucking up all the pink, blue, yellow and white fragments of adornment. Right before they peter out, the machines sound like a space shuttle trying to take off without any fuel. How about books? Children’s books? Sure, always a good, safe bet. But last year we gave her a box with my worn-out Bernstein Bear’s collection inside and she looked at us like we’d handed her a dog turd. I think it was the dilapidated covers and pages, some of them completely missing or torn in half. I’m happy to report she’s since warmed to them and we read them most nights.
But no, this year we wanted to do something different. The thing about birthdays is that they should be inspiring to not only the receiver but the giver. This is a tough task, especially when the age gap creeps upwards of three decades. Jesus Christ! Am I that old? So, when I thought about a fish tank, I was excited and enthusiastic. This will be a gift we all can enjoy! I thought. That’s the other thing about birthdays - as a parent, it’s our chance to learn from our personal, historical disappointments and do it the right way with our kids. We get to reinstitute the good traditions and forget about the bad ones. So, I admit, I was selfishly giddy at the idea of getting another fish tank.
I had several as a kid. They started small and simple. A single goldfish. Then a Siamese fighting fish. You know the ones. They look like they have sheets for fins and they come in wonderful colors and they’re all contained in cute, suffocating oval jars. Bettas, they’re officialy named. I had lots of wild fish too. Mostly wild fish. My friends and I were always catching perch or bass or crappie and sometimes we’d keep one instead of eating it. My buddy Corey was the undisputed king of wild fish tanks. He must have had a dozen tanks in his house and at any given time they were filled with a largemouth bass or a bullhead catfish or a pumpkinseed perch. Going over to his house was like walking under water. And the fish didn’t fade with domesticity; they were still wild. Later, he’d let them back into whatever body of water they came from, only wanting to study the creatures, never to subjugate. He did this not only with fish but with turkeys, quail, pheasants, and geese. No doubt a deer or a fox, if given the chance.
But I had the exotic stuff too. I remember when I was in junior high, my friend Kyle and I thought it would be cool to build the ultimate aquarium. We bought the biggest the store had - a 75-gallon beauty. We filled it eagerly and spent months stocking it, saving every dollar we could and splurging on Oscars, Plecostomus, guppies, Bala sharks, swimming frogs, snails, neons, tetras, angelfish. Everything we could find that looked extravagant and eye-catching. It was if we were on some hidden camera episode of “Pimp My Fish Tank” and we were trying like hell to win. I even bought a dragon-looking eel for something around a hundred bucks. It was white with a black stripe and gills the flared when he snaked through the bottom of the tank rocks. He looked like one of Khaleesi’s dragons from Game of Thrones, only smaller and with gills. And white. And obviously, no wings. Shit, maybe it looked nothing like one of Khaleesi’s dragons but I was proud of that eel, ok! And we were both proud our masterpiece. Kyle came over two or three times a week and we’d feed the fish and admire all that we had created. And then one day when I was gone, dad decided to do me a favor and clean it. Only he didn’t rinse out the dish soap. When he filled it back up and put the fish in, they all died. He had good intentions and looking back, it was an uncommon gesture, but nevertheless – every fish croaked, even my prized dragon eel. I remember him being somewhat flippant.
“Shit, I’m sorry son. I’ll buy ya some new ones,” or something like that. That was the end of my exotic aquarium days.
Fast forward twenty years and I find myself in PetSmart, admiring the various guppies and goldfish. My daughter’s birthday was the next day and I, in my usual procrastinating ways, figured we could simply drive to the store, buy a small tank, bag the fish and mix them all together when we got home. Just like we did when I was a kid. Walla! Birthday fish magic! But I soon found myself accosted by the short, young, blue polo-wearing fish guards known as PetSmart associates. They looked identical, regardless of age or sex. Maybe it was the blue collared shirts or the matching black pants but they all seemed to wear glasses and be of similar height. And they all looked like they loved Harry Potter very much or at least looked up greatly to those who did. I figured once my daughter pointed at a tank and said, “that one,” that would be it. We’d get our fish and go home. But no. I was soon peppered with questions by the blue fish guards.
“How big is your tank?”
“How many fish are you buying?”
“Which ones are you looking at specifically?”
“Have you ever owned an aquarium before?”
“Are you familiar with new tank disease?”
“Have you acclimated your tank?”
“Do you have the proper filter?”
“Do you know how many cubic inches of living space a Plecostomus requires?”
What the hell? This wasn’t the way I remembered it. There were more questions than a government application for employment at a nuclear facility. My daughter had pointed to two of the black and white ones and two of the orange ones. Just bag the mother fuckers and let’s go home, I thought. I’m getting hungry and I’m sure the dog has pissed in the laundry room by now. But no. The blue fish guards told me no! They told me I wasn’t allowed to buy those specific fish in that specific quantity because my fish tank wasn’t “appropriate living space” for that species. They told me the orange ones were aggressive and that they couldn’t be mixed with the black and white ones (a rather intolerant viewpoint, I thought). Then they educated me on all matters of cubic swimming space as it related to guppy survivability in direct proximity to bloodfin tetras. I became dizzy and ardent. I thought I was here to spend money? Did they not want my money? I thought this was a place that sold fish to people that wanted to buy fish? And where I came from, the true test for livability in a home fish tank was to plop the bastards inside and see what happened. If they were still kicking the next day, you had it made. But no. Now there were calculations and behavioral statistics and water temperature ranges and aggressive vs docile relationships. The blue fish guards made it sound like I was selecting a surrogate birth mother, not picking up a few fish for the home aquarium.
Now, to their credit, maybe they were just doing their job and doing it well. They obviously cared for the fish they were about to let go. They were no doubt knowledgeable, or at least, they did an excellent job sounding like they were. But I can’t say they were helpful. They acted like it was a privilege to allow me the honor of purchasing one of their prized cheek puffers. It pissed me off. This shouldn’t be the way this goes, I thought. I should have just gone and caught a couple bluegill out of the local pond and put them in a tank. They would have been much more interesting, hardier, and we could have pan fried them if they rolled belly up. A win-win, in my book. But it was clear my daughter wanted the shiny little suckers at PetSmart. There was no turning back. And I admitted to myself that it was possible I was turning arrogant in age and simply didn’t want to take instruction from Todd, the adamant and pushy twenty-something blue fish guard with no girlfriend save the speckled water monkeys in his single bedroom apartment. So, I lied. I told Todd and his regiment of blue fish guards that I had a fifty-gallon aquarium at home when really, my wife had a 5-gallon starter kit tucked under her arm. And by then she was looking at me like I had my shirt off at a black-tie event. When they asked me where I purchased my 50-gallon tank (yes, I thought it was an intrusive question also for ten bucks an hour) I told them I bought it used on e-bay. I told them I knew everything about new aquarium disease or whatever the hell it was. I told them anything I had to in order get out of the door with the four little guppies so we could go home, have dinner and watch Stranger Things on Netflix. That intro music, right!
When did bringing creatures into your home become a rigid, highly selective pass or fail test? Shouldn’t we be allowed to sort some of this out on our own? The exotic pet world is a different animal and I understand that. But for my money, I’d rather catch a largemouth bass and either A) let it go, B) eat it, or C) keep it for a while and study it before choosing A or B. But the pet world blends into an odd concoction of things we name and things we eat and things we love. In some ways, I think it’s what’s wrong with society. A wicked stew of anthropomorphism and commercialism. There’s always money to be made and if that means mass production of farm raised goldfish, so be it says the corporate suits. I cringe to think about where all those exotic fish really come from and how they get to PetSmart or any of the other bulk sellers. Shouldn’t our ability to own most animals be limited to our capacity for seeing them in the wild? Even capturing them in the wild? Should it really be necessary for Suzie in Georgia to own a Lithuanian rock lizard? Shouldn’t some things be place-specific? After all, that’s how you come to learn about it and that knowledge leads to a sense of ownership and responsibility, acquired only through time and proximity to the environment. Maybe it’s just me but the mass-produced world of Siamese fighting fish and exported boa constrictors is the wrong side of the coin.
But my daughter had a good birthday. She loved watching the fish swim under the blue lamp every night before bed. As a father, all personal prejudices fade in comparison to her smile. And as the orange ones continued to bite the hell out of the black and white ones, I admitted to myself that Todd knew much more about exotic fish affairs than I did. So, it probably won’t be the last time I submit to the blue fish guards. But I can’t promise I won’t lie when they ask me my tank size. That’s a personal matter and it’s none of their damn business.