On matters of life and death...

Remember our goldfish Timmy Boomda?  Well I just discovered his lifeless body floating in the fish bowl.  I'm not going to pretend I'm sad.  Cleaning out the fish bowl is now one less job on my already too long 'to do' list.  Of course the death of a pet always inevitably leads to a series of difficult questions from the smaller members of the family.  Here is a little look at what occurred when the kids discovered the body…

Minty: mummy, Timmy has laid down properly to go to sleep

Me: Darling, Timmy is dead.  He's not ever going to wake up.

Minty: I don't mind… I'm not going to die.

Me: Well… actually… everyone dies at some point.

Minty: Sometimes daddy dies… and he wakes back up

Me: Daddy isn't actually dead.  He just sleeps very heavily sometimes

and a little later…

Minty: I don't know where Timmy is.  

Me: He's right there, dead, floating at the top of his bowl.  

Minty: but where is he?  

From her tone and emphasis, my best interpretation of this is that she was asking about the thing that made Timmy alive instead of dead, the essence of him, his soul.  My internal response (you know the one your head forms before you open your mouth) was 'shit I don't know. I don't think fish have souls'.  Frankly I'm not geared for philosophical enquiries before I've had a morning coffee.  Instead I chose to pretend I didn't understand what she was asking and merely repeated myself, 'see he's floating there dead in the bowl'.  I wonder how many more probing questions I'm going to answer in a severely inadequate way as a parent.  Probably too many to bear thinking about.

If you're wondering what Turi was doing during all of this, he was basically dancing about with a big grin on his face, tossing pinches of fish food into the bowl.  Clearly it hasn't raised any existential questions for him!

In which Turi exhibits cat like behaviour...

We bought the kids a fish.  Even though I sort of hate fish.  The kids are very excited.  They are having trouble concentrating at meal times since the fish bowl sits in the middle of our dinning table.  They spend all their time standing on their chairs, pointing and chanting, 'fish, fish!'.  Minty has named it Boomda, because apparently this is the sound lightning makes.

I am beginning to think the term 'gold' fish refers not to colour but to the amount of money one of these things costs.  Naively I thought I could just buy the fish and bung it in a bowl of water.  I didn't factor in the 'water conditioner', 'ammonia and chlorine eliminator block', the stones for the bottom of the bowl, the fish food and the bowl itself.  Nearly $80 later, this would want to be one amazing fish!  (Complaining about the cost of a pet makes me feel very grown up!)

Sadly the fish doesn't seem to like it very much at our house.  This may have something to do with Turi darting his hand into the water and trying to catch the fish, moments after it was placed in its new bowl.  The fish spends most of the day sitting motionless at the bottom of the bowl.  I suspect it's in shock.