Day 8: A Fish Tale

Shortly after Katie and I were married we started transitioning the townhouse from bachelor-pad to a real house where humans could live. We were pretty poor in those first few months of marriage and we were just scraping by.

One weekend, we had 20 dollars left after paying all of the bills and wanted to go do something fun. We decided that our new apartment needed a little extra life, so off we went off to Petsmart in search of a new inhabitant.

Mizu - 水

We just looked around for a while. The puppies and kittens were cute, but out of our price range (plus we’d have to pay a pet deposit with the landlord). We thought about a parakeet, but with all the necessary supplies it also would have been out of our price range. Katie wasn't impressed by my suggestions of getting a tarantula, snake or lizard, so we searched on.

After looking around a bit more, we decided on buying a beta fish. We picked out a nice glass container, fish food, a ceramic Japanese temple, and (of course) a vibrant little blue beta. On our way back to the house, we indulged and used the leftover money at Publix to buy some cookie dough.

Upon returning home we set up his new enclosure and began deciding on a name for our new little pal. We went through several, but ultimately settled on “Mizu”, which means "water" in Japanese.

Mizu was a great new companion. His little glass rested on the bar and overlooked both the kitchen and the living room. He would follow us around in his glass as we moved to and fro. He was quite an enthusiastic little fish. Sometimes he would just dash back and forth unexpectedly. He was also fond of swimming circles around his little Japanese temple until he tired himself out.

About 2 ½ months after becoming a member of the new family, Mizu started moving around a little slowly. He would still follow us around from his enclosure, but he was very sluggish about it. He had also stopped eating, which was alarming because the proper little fish would normally turn into a piranha when his pellets hit the water.

The Temple of Mizu

One Saturday morning I came downstairs to feed him and realized he was missing. He was nowhere to be seen in his glass. I searched all over. I even looked outside of his glass just in case he decided life was too mundane and he wanted to give base jumping a go.

It wasn't until I started pulling things out of the water that I finally found poor little Mizu. He did a lot of things, but one thing he would never do was go into the Japanese temple. However, with his last strength, Mizu had apparently decided to enter the temple to die. His poor little body laid just inside the entrance, bobbing slightly back and forth.

His temple still stands in an otherwise empty glass container. Little Mizu lived an honorable life and made certain that he died in dignity.