The Life Aquatic

Swiper. I decided that this one was Swiper because he has a dot on his head, and I think that his namesake on Dora the Explorer does as well.

Diego. He may seem grumpy, but he's quite care-free.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we got DeLaynie and Ella fish for Christmas. Obviously, DeLaynie is only mildly interested in them at this point, and Ella ignores their existence altogether. DeLaynie does enjoy counting them every few days, just to make sure that they're both still there, I suppose. She counts them at least fifteen times ("1,2... 1,2... 1,2."). Since there are only two of them, it takes her that many times to be satisfied. She also likes to watch me feed them. I don't let her do it because I know that she'd over-feed them, which makes the water get dirty faster. Cleaning the tank is a job that I don't long to do very often.

I have become pretty attached to the little boogers. I look forward to seeing them. They sit next to my coffee maker, so I see them before I do much else. I did clean the tank this weekend, which meant that they had to live in a food storage container that was too dingy to continue working in its original capacity. I was afraid that the water had something in it because they were just sitting there. I used a big enough container that they had room to swim around and "play", but they just sat there. It wasn't until I put them back into their real tank that I realized why they were so depressed. They were lonely. The temporary housing was made out of a soft plastic, and it didn't provide the reflections that they were used to. They missed their reflections. I found this far more adorable than such a scene deserves.

I'm not sure what's going to happen to my little buddies when we leave here. If they actually survive that long, I'm sure that they can find a home in a classroom. I've decided that fish make far better pets than I'd once thought. They don't cry, get the house dirty, or hurt the children on accident. Yep, fish make great pets for people who are burnt-out in the pet department.