#12 Buy Goldfish

I love animals.  I like to think that I am not a crazy pet lady, but if I'm completely honest with myself, I'm probably borderline.  At least I have a boyfriend, otherwise I would probably end up being one of those lonely old ladies that only finds solace in her pets.  Luckily I still have a life to balance the crazy.  At least for now. :)

I had a number of pets throughout my childhood.  My first that I can remember was a bunny named Mopsy who my parents bought when I was about 6.  My parents later gave her to a farm because she bit me and my brother.  I found so much peace with that story-- envisioning her happily hopping around fields with other animals-- and even remember meeting a friend at camp who believed her family had taken home my old bunny.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized that bringing your pet to the "farm" was a cliche lie parents told their children when they got rid of pets.  Honestly, I don't really want to ever find out what really happened.  Ignorance is bliss.  I'm still going to believe she died a happy old bunny on a nice farm.

My parents had two dogs while I lived with them.  The first was Grover, who was very energetic and not very loveable, and who I later found dead on the side of the road when I was about 10 years old.  I was permanently scarred from that experience.  The second was Dally, who is currently 15, and was one of the most wonderful dogs in the world.  Of all my childhood pets, she was the one I loved the most.


I also had a handful of random animals that I collected with my brother from our neighborhood.  Among these were toads, salamanders, caterpillars, and tree frogs.  I used to take jars or empty wipe boxes (from my baby siblings), put in a few leaves and food I thought they would eat and see if I could keep them alive.  After a while I viewed myself as somewhat of an expert because of the skills I developed through trial and error experiments.  For instance, I learned to poke the air holes out instead of in after a toad jumped and was skewed by a piece of broken plastic.  I learned to never leave wipe boxes out in the sun or the animals will literally fry from the heat.  I learned exactly which leaves the caterpillars liked to eat, and that when they made cocoons, they would shrivel to death if you didn't lightly spray them with water.  Any fatalities were buried next to our house in our "pet graveyard."  I think my proudest moment was when I finally raised a batch of caterpillars that spun cocoons and hatched into moths.  I let them go in my backyard and always wondered if they were among the moths that swarmed around the light by our back door.

The summer before I left for college, I bought a goldfish to take with me.  Originally I named her Mercy, but for the majority of her life her name was actually Fishy.  Fishy lived about three years and she was with me through a lot of the trauma I endured my first few years of college, including my grandfather dying, transferring schools, losing a few close high school friends, dealing with a handful of terrible roommates and difficult professors, and spending countless miserable all-nighters studying for exams.  I loved her way more than I should have.  I mean, she was a goldfish.  But she was always there-- she was one of the few consistent things in my life during college.  And she recognized me and interracted with me-- when I woke up in the morning or entered the room, she would swim excitedly toward the front of the bowl.  Maybe it was because she knew that I was her source of food, but I liked to think it was because she liked me.  She was always so happy and energetic, and she always made me feel better when I watched her swim around her fish bowl.  In a slightly superstitious way, I believed that she was a symbol in my life.  That she was there to get me through college and when she died I wouldn't need her anymore and my life would be a lot better.  I'm definitely making college sound a lot worse than it was.  But those of you who went to college probably understand the feeling-- college is really a transition between your childhood and adulthood.  When you graduate, you kind of hope that your life will turn out the way you always dreamed.  In a sense, she was a symbol of hope for me.

Fishy died at the very end of my junior year.  It had been one of the craziest years of my life-- I was working a part time job, and taking about 18 credits (the maximum amount of credits allowed) not including music lessons, two music ensembles, and hours of practicing for my senior recital.  I was also taking Financial Accounting and Music History-- two of the hardest classes I ever took in college.  During finals week, I noticed I needed to clean her bowl, but I barely had time to sleep, let alone do anything else.  I promised her I would clean it when I was done with finals.  She was three years old and had survived multiple car rides, an accident involving her glass bowl shattering on the pavement (with her in it), and the hundreds of times I had not had time to clean her bowl when it needed to be cleaned.  I figured she would be okay until summer break.  But this time she got sick.  And even after I cleaned her bowl and brought her home for the summer, she continued to get even more sick and died two weeks later.  I cried for about two days.  It was silly-- she was only a goldfish-- but she meant a lot to me.  I blamed myself for not cleaning her cage sooner.  And I was also sad that she had died before my life had changed for the better.

I definitely became less superstitious after that.  Life doesn't always work out the way we hope.  It's just how it is.  But when I look back on my life, her death actually did occur just at the point my life started to take direction.  Maybe not as immediately as I was hoping, but that next year.  That was the year I really started to love Bethel and met a few friends that year that still mean a lot to me now.  I started working at Wells Fargo, which eventually became the beginning of my career, and is also where I met my boyfriend who I have been dating for almost two years now.

Maybe I love animals a little more than most, but they are definitely a big blessing to everyone.  This is why people people bring animals to hospitals for therapy, why our local pet store was always overflowing with college students anxious to play with the puppies, why nearly every person I pass when I walk my dog smiles.  There is a certain joy and peace that animals bring to people that cannot be found in many other things.  Maybe it's the fact that no matter what we do or who we are, our pets still love us unconditionally.


Right now I have a dog, Sadie, and a cat, Rosie, who are the two best pets in the world... and of course I'm not biased. :)  But I always knew I would like to get a goldfish again someday.  Which is why I put it on my bucket list.



Yesterday, I bought two goldfish- Lila and Lawrence (their picture is at the top of the post.)  I decided to upgrade the living conditions of my goldfish (Fishy used to live in an old plastic biscotti container), so I bought an aquarium with a filter.  And it was soooo expensive, but I am a kinder pet owner because of it.  So far, I think they are adjusting well!  I understand that most goldfish do not live quite as long as Fishy did-- they die pretty easily.  But who knows?  Maybe they will be around when I transition to my next "phase" in life.  Regardless, it will be fun to have fish again. :)