Okay.
The title pretty much says it all. We’re the Hastings, and we kill fish.
My apologies go out to Granny and Papaw, who bought the boys a very special gift for their 5th birthday last summer. A full, ready-to-go, comprehensive, dummy-proof goldfish and tank set-up. A perfect package deal sort of thing that should have simply set us down the path of goldfish ownership.
Except that it didn’t. And I want to clarify it is Not Granny and Papaw’s Fault. They had no way of foreseeing that we the Hastings were destined to become serial fish killers. That the laws of science as they apply to algae simply don’t apply in our house. That we’d find a way to break the bounds of ineptitude in owning a couple of (sorry) dumb fish.
I believe our first fish died within 36 hours of entering our house. I think the next followed soon after. That first week, I lost track of how many replacements died for reasons we still can’t determine. Maybe they got sucked into the filter, maybe the water was toxic, maybe we fed them too much/too little… we don’t really know. Because we suck at this.
Multiple calls to and visits from were made to Granny, our official fish expert who has become something of a goddess to me for her ability to raise and sustain aquatic life in her home for decades. She was stumped. I don’t think she’s seen such incompetence. More than once she’s offered to take the poor fish off our hands (more for the fishes’ benefit than anything). Visitors to our house have marveled at the cloudiness of the tank water and chastised us for our negligence. We’re trying, people! Something is seriously wrong with us. Personally, I am kind of amazed that the girl who grew up wanting to be a veterinarian, who managed to drag in and care for countless animals into our family (including two horses) somehow now at 30 cannot manage to care for some fish in a tank.
We are also creative at how we manage to kill fish. One day while changing the water out in the tank (a lovely task that I look forward to for weeks and shouldn’t be necessary) I managed to scoop out a perfectly healthy little gray sucker fish and deposit him down the drain in our kitchen sink. The boys were supposed to be making sure Mommy didn’t scoop up a fish accidentally, but they’re five… and I should know better. The worst part is we didn’t even notice he was gone until a week had gone by.
This was probably the same sucker fish that nearly got killed before we even left Wal-Mart because we let Ben carry the bag around and he’d sloshed the poor thing up to the top of the bag where 
he helplessly held on, oxygen-less, with his little sucker mouth. That would have been a record kill time. The other sucker fish in that pair we bought somehow mysteriously disappeared a few weeks later. The only thing we could figure was he was eaten by one of the two freak-of-nature goldfish that somehow have remained living in the tank for the last six months or so. They’re huge, they’re smart, they fight, and I’m really not sure how they’ve stayed alive. I don’t believe in Darwinism but there's something about watching them live despite the odds against them that makes me pause.
he helplessly held on, oxygen-less, with his little sucker mouth. That would have been a record kill time. The other sucker fish in that pair we bought somehow mysteriously disappeared a few weeks later. The only thing we could figure was he was eaten by one of the two freak-of-nature goldfish that somehow have remained living in the tank for the last six months or so. They’re huge, they’re smart, they fight, and I’m really not sure how they’ve stayed alive. I don’t believe in Darwinism but there's something about watching them live despite the odds against them that makes me pause. For the last few months things have been fairly uneventful with the fish. But then Hilton got all brave with the boys last week and brought home two big and stout suckerfish, from the Nice Wal-Mart, no less. These guys will make it, he said hopefully. They seemed to take to their new habitat well, sucking away all the day. The boys showed a renewed interest in the tank, watching the new additions carefully.
How long did they last? Five days.
At morning feeding this week, Ben noticed one was missing. Closer inspection revealed he wasn’t missing but dead at the bottom of the tank. Where was the other? Oh, he was dead, too. At 6:40am, the boys and I all stood there and blinked, stunned. We had managed to kill two more fish. Fish that were supposed to make it. I nearly cried (it was early, people). I thought the boys might. No one spoke. Jake finally spoke.
“Yeah, I thought they might die.” It’s a good thing my kids are made of stronger stuff than me.
So what’s the worst part of a fish dying? Yep. Getting rid of it. With how many fish we’d lost, one would assume we had a net to scoop them out. But we didn’t. Somehow with the detachment that only a police officer could have, Hilton has scooped them out without a net and disposed of them. Hilton wasn’t due home until late in the evening. And the tank already smelled off. I couldn’t even stand to glance at it with those now-disgusting fish corpses floating at the bottom (hope none of y’all are reading this on your lunch break).
This is a perfect time to insert just how disgusting a fish tank really is. I mean, they are swimming around in their own filth and grossness. I can’t even stand to walk by the seafood counter at Kroger…. Bleccchhh!!! Gag me with a spoon and all that.
But by 4pm I was getting desperate. There was no doubt the room reeked of nastiness. I had a Bible study starting at 6:30pm and there was no way my house was going to smell like Dead Fish. I tried, I really tried to make myself reach down and scoop them up with a cup. As soon as my hand hit the water, I screamed and shook my hands like the baby I am. I finally decided to sacrifice a ladle spoon from the kitchen and scoop them up. I say sacrifice because I afterward I threw it in the trash afterward. Not even the hottest water or strongest soap could make that thing usable again. Into the trash, buh-bye.
But I couldn’t just flush the fish. Hilton wanted me to save them in a bag in case W-mart needed evidence the fish had actually died (we were getting our $8.00 back, by golly). So I had to pour them into a bag, which I put in another bag and threw in the garage. Then I did another tank cleaning and sprayed the room with so much Febreeze it made my children cough and sneeze.
The End.
(Granny, I hope you’re not upset by any of this—it has been an adventure for all of us and I do not blame you a bit!!! I am in awe of your Fish-Raising abilities!)
