On Sunday we took the kids to a Purim carnival at temple where they could get a lunch and play games.
One of the games involved finding an "X" under a plastic duck, and if you found one you won a prize. Unlike most carnivals the game was rigged to make sure every kid got a prize - they could keep looking till they found an "X".
The prize was a goldfish in a plastic baggie. Yay! A prize you have to spend money on to keep.
This of course resulted in two excited and happy children, each holding a baggie with a fish that they promptly named: Lilly and Lucky.
So we headed home, stopping by the pet store to get a little plastic fish tank for the fish for $8. By then the fish, having been placed in little plastic bags with water by a well-meaning but really incompetent ADD teenager, weren't doing so hot.
In fact by the time we got home, Lucky wasn't, and Lilly's luck ran out soon after.
This brought the kids face to face with the death of a shortly-possessed but very dearly-loved pet. Pets that had been given names. There were tears, lots of 'em.
This necessitated a trip to another pet store, where we learned many other kids at the carnival had similarly come with their parents after numerous burials at sea for their short-lived goldfish friends.
So $17 on a nice big 10-gallon aquarium with filter special (gravel and fake cactus extra) and .15 each for two new goldfish later, the kids now are proud owners of new pets with the responsibility to feed them twice a day.
Abby helped with cleaning the tank and adding the gravel and water.
All is right with the world again and Mom and Dad made it all better, Which is what we're here for after all.
So introducing the new fish - Graciella and Liliana.
4 comments:
Dude--goldfish? Seriously? If you're going to run a tank, at least put some real fish in it.
Now you got me wanting to set up a tank again.
Reminds me of my childhood. My father wouldn't allow me to have a pet, but I did get to keep the goldfish I won at a carnival. When it died my mother replaced it without telling me because she didn't want me to be upset. This went on for years, even after I figured out that it wasn't normal for fish to shrink regularly. I told Mom it was ok to stop, but by then we were afraid it would upset Dad if we told him. He kept dragging people in to see the amazing goldfish, telling them it was the longest living goldfish he'd ever seen.
My kids got guppies from a friend last fall. They each have their own quart mason jar that gets cleaned regularly. We're thinking of a tank soon since it is less likely to be knocked off the dresser and broken.
ML: Hey, you gotta start the kids off small, and since they lost their goldfish, the only replacement was more goldfish, each carefully selected by the kid in question. If they can handle the responsibility, they may get more fish in the future.
Spikessb: Yep, we've done the late night pet store run for a previous goldfish before brining the corpse to match - apparently this is a well-known tactic among parents and it works on the young.
Scott: I had guppies as a kid along wiht neon tetras and a couplered-tailed black sharks and other assorted fish, it was pretty interesting, but remeber that guppies breed like rabbits (or its it that rabbits breed like guppies?)
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