Despite--or perhaps because of--my best efforts yesterday, we lost Polly the parrot fish. Polly was from the first batch of fish we bought when this whole mess started. Cha picked him because of his funny ambiguous clown's smile, and the way he approached her finger when she pointed at the tank.Polly loved to interact with humans. As soon as someone entered the room he would start to dance, and he was always peeping out at us when we looked. As soon as he had your attention he would dance back and forth, and sometimes he would pick up gravel from the bottom of the tank and put it on larger flat rocks as if to say "keep watching! Look what I can do!" He would put six or seven tiny rocks on the big ones and then wipe them all off with a swish of his mighty tail. Very curious behavior. When I found him dead this morning there was one bit of gravel placed on his favorite altar, but he missed the flat rock in his final crisis. A final offering.
It might seem silly to get all exercised by the death of a fish, but we had him for more than five years, and enjoyed his antics. Several guests at our house have seen Polly and gone on to begin their own aquariums because he was so strange and funny. Now he's dead.
4 comments:
it's not silly to be upset. it's a sad thing when something we choose to protect and care for leaves us. i'm sorry and sad with you.
Aw, thanks!
Anyone who's got an aquarium though has seen many fish come and go. It's strange that dozens of tetras or neons or guppies or plecos or hatchet fish have come and gone with little fanfare over the years, while the big "anchor" fish are mourned.
I get sad when my plants die too.
I am so sorry! I'm sad and I never even met Polly. I get really depressed about people's animals dying, for some reason. Bums me out way more than people dying.
Sorry to hear about Polly's passing. That fish had a lot of personality.
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