I didn't kill them this time.....
For her 5th birthday, I bought my oldest daughter a fish tank, then a fish for each of my daughters. Shortly after waking up on the 3rd day of being the proud mother of children who are taking care of their very own pets, I thought to myself, "time to feed the new fish".

Just as I'm about to call the girls over to feed their new darlings, I realize we have dead fish. Concerned they won't take the news well, I gave the girls a lengthy and gentle explanation of death. Of course, their reaction was to argue over who got to hold the bag of dead fish on the way to return them to the store to exchange for live fish. I held the bag.

Sooo.....I wake up on the 2nd day of being the proud mother of children who are taking care of their very own *second* set of pets......

"Meg, do you know why there is water on the table around the fish tank and the fish are dead?"

My child sheepishly replies, "They wanted to get out of the water and play with me. But then they died so I put them back in the water so they would come back to life."

Cue another, yet more stern, lecture on death and why we do not put our hands in the tank or take the fish out. And, this time, I let the girls hang on to the corpses.

When we arrive at the pet store......."Meg, why is the fish now unrecognizable mush?"

A matter of fact reply this time, "I wanted to see what was inside the fish so I squeezed them."

After convincing the shop clerk that the fish died of natural causes regardless of their current flat and gooey state, we leave with our 3rd set of fish.

Sure enough, 3rd day in....."Meg!!"

"I didn't kill them this time Mommie. I promise! And if you let me hold the bodies when we go to the store, I won't even crush them."

After the 4th set of dead goldfish, a new clerk informed me that the 1st clerk sold us fish who were too big for the size of tank we bought, so died because they suffocated on their own body waste. Gee thanks.

The good news is, our 5th set of fish lived a whole 9 months.


Around the same time, my Mother started fishing and felt the need to keep the first fish she caught wrapped in plastic in the freezer. During every visit, the girls would insist on holding the fish and parading around the house with Grandmother's new pet fish. I think they even named it.


Another fun twist is that my Mother spends many hours a local cemetary photographing headstones for her geneology group. It didn't bother me when she said the girls enjoy going with her to run and play in all that space. Of couse, once my children informed me that they can always tell the religion of the dead person by the way the headstone is facing and they like finding the graves of children, I quit asking what they did that day at Grandmother's house.


Occassionally I worry about my childrens' apparent facination with death and corpses.....
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 1 Mar 2008, 7:00, Reply)