Becky was teasing me in the comments on the last entry, saying that I should start breeding rumble fish and become the Crazy Fish Lady. To that I say unh-unh, and for a very good reason: been there, done that. In my youth, I was, for a time, the crazy fish girl.

Between 9 and 14 or so, I was convinced I would become a veterinarian or an ichthyologist when I grew up. I spent my summers hanging out with an old vet who was cool enough to put up with me, and I kept cats and dogs and hamsters and mice and rats and fish. Lord knows what I’m forgetting in that list. There were gerbils and newts and a Sheltie named Starbuck, all gifts from my parents when I was really tiny. A collie named Sparky and a drooling Persian named Ashley, but I think they were there before I was. I wanted a capybara. I never did get it, or a horse, but I did get riding lessons until my allergies finally got the best of me.

But back to the fish. At the height of my fish-interest, I was running a couple of 30-gallon tanks full of tropicals that kept having babies, a 10 or 20 gallon of crawdads and river fish, and a 100-gallon tank that contained Samson the Oscar. Sam came to the house as a fingerling when I was 13 or so, and grew big enough to need 100-gallons all to himself. He was sweet and moody. Oscars quickly learn that people = food, and so they’ll swim up and say hi to you and talk awhile. But Sam was also suicidal. All of those gallons of water needed massive filters to keep everything moving, and Sam hated the filter intake tubes. He’d beat his rather large head against them until he knocked them apart, banging himself up in the process. When they finally quit, he’d be happy until he realized he had insufficient air. Then I’d come home, discover what he’d done, and put everything back together. He’d revive, be happy for awhile, and then remember that he hated intake tubes. We danced this dance for years, and my mom was a partner too, putting Sam back together as needed. He got ick and recovered several times. He knocked all the scales off his head in his hatred toward the intake tubes and became a seriously hoary looking old man. Toward his later years, he began to fling himself out of the tank, which necessitated installation of a sturdy cover. I can’t remember exactly how he died — he may have flung himself one too many times. He was buried under the fig tree, which had a bumper season that year. He joined my brother’s three huge goldfish, who also died natural deaths and became petunias.

By the time Sam died, I had shut down the other aquariums. When we finally dismantled his big tank, that was the end. I haven’t had another tank until now, and really hadn’t missed it. They’re fun when things are going right, but when a tank gets out of balance or isn’t well maintained, they’re a time and energy suck. I suspect this wouldn’t be as much of a problem now, since I’m considerably older and my attention to detail is much improved. It took me about a year of thinking about it before I got the tiny one-gallon that’s on my desk now. Mister Husband is fascinated, never having kept fish as a kid. Who knows, we might end up with a bigger one at some point. We’ll see. But I definitely have no plans to run a multi-tank fish show like the one I ran as a kid.