Fish Hospice

My Betta is in hospice.

For weeks he's been lying at the bottom of the big vase that's been his home for the last four years.  His veil-like fins are ragged and torn, and the iridescent blue scales on his tiny body have turned the color of sand.  Every morning I look at him and think, it's all over now, he's finally dead.  But as I stand there rehearsing burial scenarios I'll catch the flicker of an eye, or the slight shudder of a  pectoral fin. 

I bought him because he looked like a flower, with his creamy trailing fins veined with pink and blue, and his bright azure body.  And then I discovered that he wanted a relationship.

At first I only noticed that whenever I went near his vase, which I kept on the kitchen counter, he would swim towards me.  Then one day I idly stuck my index finger in the water and he swam straight to it.  I wiggled my finger and stroked a fin, then stroked again, and he stayed right there, like a dog.  After that I felt obliged to give him daily stroking sessions.  How could I not?  He was so much more than a flower.

"Want to pet my fish?" I would ask my friends.  And they would stick their fingers in and my Betta would swim up to them--but he only swam towards female fingers.  Let a male of any age, no matter how mild, put his finger in and the Betta would swish his lacy tail and swim away.

Now he's dying.  Every time I walk by his vase I think, he's probably suffering.  He's ancient for a captive Betta, and he'll never recover.  I should probably euthanize him.  But the days pass and I can't seem to do it.  Mind you, I have in the past done the right thing by my old and suffering dogs and cats, and taken them to the vet to be put down.  I have personally clubbed to death wolf spiders that were bigger than my Betta, and in the prime of life.  But this is different.

So for the moment, I'm giving my fish palliative care, trying to keep him comfortable but avoiding extreme measures.  I change his water regularly.  I make sure his heater is on.  And now and then I look into his eyes, which still appear to look back at me, and I tell him that he's the most amazing fish I've ever known, and that it's all right to let go.

Fish Encore

Someone who knows me well once said that I cannot rest unless I have a certain quota of critters around me.  When I lost a cat long ago, I put a cage of breeding finches in the kitchen.  When we moved and the finches had to go, I got goats.  When my goat days were over I got another dog.  And now that I'm at an all time critter low for me--just two dogs and nine hens--I've developed this thing about fish.

There's the betta in the big glass vase next to the kitchen sink.  And there are the goldfish in the little pond just outside the back door.  But the goldfish are mysterious beings who prefer to hang out in the murky depths instead of swimming decoratively among the water lilies.

So I've been longing for some goldfish that I can talk to and get to know, and now I have a pair.  They live in the house in a tub originally intended for a small water garden.  These goldfish are the round-bodied type known as "fantails."  They look like a ping pong ball adorned with fins and a long swishy tail.  Which is why I have named them Ping and Pong. 

Pong is red and gold all over, and Ping is white with a big red splotch on his or her head.   Pong swimming around in the water looks a lot like Bisou when she runs on the grass, with her red and gold "feathers" waving in the wind and her long ears splaying out like fins.

When blizzards rage next winter, I will look into my little pond at Ping and Pong trailing their tails and flashing their scales and I will feel like I'm on a tiny Caribbean vacation.

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Dogged By Dog Guilt

I know I'm not the only one suffering from this, but sometimes it feels that way.  Are there really other people out there who, watching their canine companion snoring peacefully on the rug, wonder whether the dog is sleeping because, a) she is tired or, b) she is in despair at the hopeless monotony of her days?

There is no end to the emotional and mental states that I attribute to my dogs:  frustrated ambition, a sense of unrealized potential, loneliness, boredom, and existential despair.   Don't think I haven't noticed that some of these preoccupations also occupy my mind.  But it's hard to keep from projecting when my dogs are at my feet (Wolfie) or under my elbow (Bisou) practically 24/7.

I feel that I am perpetually disappointing them.  Every time I close my laptop or put on a sweater they catapult to the back door in the mad hope that something magical is about to happen--but alas, it's just me going to fire up the wood stove or spritz the plants.  It's that all-forgiving but never-ending hope in their eyes that does me in.

I'm lucky to be a member of an unofficial dog-guilt support group.  I have dog-loving friends whose dogs by any standard lead enviable lives.  They have good food and soft beds.  They have received the benefits of training.  They enjoy the company of their own species and are hardly ever out of sight of their owners.   And yet when we humans get together, one of our perennial topics of conversation is the guilt that dogs us.  We each assure the other that her dogs couldn't possibly be depressed or sad or bored in any way.  This makes us feel better for as long as it takes to finish a glass of wine.  But the moment we get home and are greeted by our patient dogs ("Not that I hold it against you, but why were you gone so long?"), the guilt returns.

Many years ago, I felt guilty about my first dog, who lived in the back yard--now that was something to feel guilty about.  But all our subsequent dogs have lived in the house, slept in our bedroom, been trained and groomed and walked and cooked for.  And the guilt has, if anything, only gotten worse.

Lately the guilt has expanded to include my fish, my little Betta splendens that I got for aesthetic reasons but who, it turns out, has emotional needs like everybody else in this house.  Every time I go by--he lives in a large flower vase on the kitchen counter--he rushes towards me, waving his tiny fins.  If it weren't for the glass between us, he'd jump onto my shoulder.  He doesn't want food.  He wants to be petted.

So I do.  Every morning, after I let the dogs out, I stand at the counter and stick my index finger in the water and pet the fish.  I try to remember to pet him once or twice while I'm fixing dinner, and again before retiring.  I don't want him to feel ignored--my interactions with him are probably the highlight of his day. 

For some reason, though, I am delightfully free from chicken-related guilt.  I take good care of my hens, but although they come running whenever they see me, they don't have that ever-hopeful-yet-forgiving look in their eyes that the dogs have.  Besides, there are nine of them.  They are their own little tribe.  They depend on me for food and shelter, but not, thank heavens, for mental stimulation or emotional sustenance.  I find them blessedly restful to be around.

Petting The Warrior

Originally I got him as a decorative object, but now we have a relationship.  I'm talking about my Betta splendens, my Siamese fighting fish.

I could not believe that a creature with an iridescent blue body surrounded by a corolla of pale yellow fins veined with delicate blue and pink could be had for a mere $4.  So I whipped out my Discover card and brought him home and gave him an elegant apartment in a two-gallon flower vase that I found at Target.  I also bunged a nice green plant in there, and some aquarium gravel and, to give him privacy, a hollow floating "log" to hide in.

When the weather turned cold it became apparent that an ambient temperature of 66F was not appropriate for a creature that evolved in the rice paddies of Thailand.  So we got the little warrior a heater of his own, but that didn't raise the temperature enough, his optimal range being between 70F and 80F.  We replaced that heater with another which still didn't do the job.  We tried a third heater, but when a cold wave came through yesterday and it was -14F in the morning and the furnace couldn't quite keep up, I set the flower vase on top of a warming tray, and that finally got the water temperature up to an acceptable level.

Why, you ask, go to such trouble to ensure the comfort of a potato chip-sized creature?   Basically, because he lets me pet him.  I never thought such a thing was possible.  Pet a fish!  Who would even want to?  But I noticed that whenever I came near his flower vase, which sits on the kitchen counter, he would swim in my direction.  That led me to put my finger on the outside of the glass and move it around slowly, and by golly, he followed it, flaring his fins.  The next step was inevitable:  I put my fingertip in the water, and he came up to it and I made the slightest stroking motion on those butterfly-thin fins and he stayed put, saying clearly, "Do that again."  So now every day, as I do my rounds misting the houseplants, feeding the chickens, and brushing the dogs' teeth, I make sure to remember to pet the fish.

This puts me in a philosophical quandary.  If an inch-long creature can actively solicit petting, what does that imply about the rest of the minor fauna around?  What about the chickadees at the feeder-- are they longing to perch on my arms?  And the field mice who invade our basement in the fall--would they like to join us as we read by the woodstove?  And those poor squirrels we deported....  Then there are the houseplants.  Who knows what they think of me, what they long for?  Maybe I should murmur to them while I mist them.    At this point, I can't even bear to think of the chard and the kale and the spinach I grow in the garden.  How, I wonder, do they feel about being cut down in their prime and eaten?

This living, feeling biomass that pulsates around me often leaves me feeling anxious and confused.  The only thing I know to do then is to mumble the Buddhist blessing, "May all beings be at ease...."

A Fish Named Salome

I've been avoiding writing about this for a couple of weeks because the subject will require descriptive powers that may well be beyond me.  But I cannot keep it to myself any longer:  I have a fish, and his name is Salome!

Right away, your lightning-quick eye catches a glitch, an inconsistency, an error.  Wasn't Salome the dancer who, with her seven veils, enticed Herod to decapitate John the Baptist?  Obviously she was a woman, and clearly I shouldn't have named my male fish after her.

But the operant factor here is not gender, but the seven veils.  Or maybe five.  In the case of my Salome--a double-tailed, half-moon male Betta--it's hard to get an exact count of veils, or fins, or tails.  What is certain is that his tiny, iridescent blue-green body trails a pleated corolla of barely-there yellow veined with random threads of brilliant blue and palest pink.

Like a bride hampered by a too-long train, Salome drags his veils behind while he swims inside the two-gallon vase that is his home.  But when he slows down the veils flare up and he turns into a kind of flower.  Sometimes, when he makes a quick turn, he runs into his outspread fins and tail, like a flamenco dancer turning into her trailing skirt.

How big is he?  When he is in full display, he's about the size of a small potato chip.  His eyes are the size of fly droppings.  His mouth, though tiny, never fails to remind me of Angelina Jolie.

His scientific name is Betta splendens, and he is totally splendid and resplendent, as are the males of most animal species, except our own.  But because in most species, including our own, the males are generally more aggressive, poor Salome cannot have a companion.

If the companion were male, they would batter each other to death.  If female, they would mate and tend their nest and, as soon as the babies hatched, would eat every last one.  So Salome lives in solitude.

But my online research tells me that Bettas are sociable little fish, who can be trained to follow one's finger and even jump through hoops, and who like variety in their environment.  For exercise, one website recommends placing a mirror next to the bowl, but keeping it there for no longer than four minutes, lest the poor thing exhaust himself trying to kill his reflection.

I haven't tried the hoop or the mirror yet, but I keep Salome in the kitchen, where I tell him how gorgeous he is a dozen times a day as I trundle past with basketfuls of stuff from the (soon-to-be-dead, I hope) garden.  And where the outside of his bowl periodically gets decorated with nose prints from Bisou.