I’m sure you all remember my familys’ menagerie of creatures, but for those of you who have suddenly come down with a debilitating case of Alzheimer’s, allow me to remind you:
I had sucky-fish (tank cleaning creature)
My two youngest girls had fishies galore…all named ‘Fishy’
My oldest daughter had Chicken the Cute Gecko
Philis the Grumpy Newt
and Archie the Immortal Fish (now re-named Death Fish)
Sadly, one by one, in an alarmingly short space of time, almost all of these creatures have left us to join the afterlife.
Let me also remind you of my Aloe plant from years ago so that you fully understand how absolutely pathetic I am at keeping anything but children alive.
The thing committed suicide off a cabinet!
Do you get the irony of this??? I managed to kill a plant MEANT TO HEAL!!!
The fact that I’ve managed to keep my children alive is an absolute miracle, and I’m sure they have only managed to survive because they can talk/cry/whine me to death when they need something deemed vital to human survival.
I equate my children’s survival techniques with the million alarms I have set on my iPhone to remind me to do everything in life, and without which, I myself would probably perish.
When it’s time to eat…they whine, when it’s time to sleep…they whine, time to wake up…whine and fight so loudly that I have no choice but to get up, time to shower…they get smelly. One way or another, their actions directly contribute to their survival.
God forbid they decided to be quiet, calm kids who did no wrong…the poor things would be gone within a week. So really…I guess I should be glad they are so loud, demanding, and whiney. In fact…I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly why God made children loud in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong…I love my girls to death, and if anyone hurts them in any way, I WILL beat that person within an inch of their life with no hesitation at all, but like all children, they know exactly which buttons to push at exactly the right time to ensure complete mental breakdown of the care-taking adult.
Ok, so back to the creatures (the four legged and watery kinds).
First my younger girls’ collection of fishies started dying mysteriously one by one, except at the end when about four of them apparently joined a cult and offed themselves up all at once.
I bought every kind of life-saving fishy product out there to clean the water, clean the fish, clean the tank, adjust the pH, play calming music and every other damn thing I could think of, but eventually they all managed to die.
Next was my sucky-fish who was one of the ‘tank cleaning’ purchases. He lived longer than any of the others, but with the last water change before we moved, he too had all he could take and we found him in that all too familiar floaty position one morning.
I must admit, with the death of sucky-fish, although I was sad I did breathe a sigh of relief, and when my daughters asked if we were going to buy more fishies, I almost gave myself an asthma attack from laughing so hard at their ludicrous suggestion.
I was ecstatic that my job was finally done because let’s face it, when you buy children pets…YOU are the one taking care of the stupid things, not your kids.
Finally…no more tank cleaning, no more smelly water changes, no more money spent on ridiculous products that did NOTHING to keep the damn fish alive, no more alarms ringing twice every bloody day reminding me to remind the children to feed their fish AGAIN!!!
Utter and complete freedom!
Until the very next day when Jenna decided she was going camping and I ended up having to babysit her fish, newt, AND gecko.
Cue to me adding a million more alarms on my phone and praying at least one of those creatures was still alive at the end of the weekend.
One day about two weeks later I got a very sad text from Jenna saying her beloved gecko died.
It was a very upsetting day because Chicken was so adorable and the one creature I actually liked even though I refused to touch it for fear of making its tail drop off. She took such good care of him so we have no idea what happened, but thank God it wasn’t during my watch!
Soon Jenna and I started noticing that Archie the Immortal Fish would look better at random times, and little by little we started to become convinced that Archie was secretly sucking the life force out of all of the other creatures.
This filled me with a mixture of fear and relief. The relief was because now it wasn’t a given anymore that I caused any of the creatures deaths…I could totally blame that crap on Archie.
The fear, was wondering who he might target next and if he was only able to murder smaller creatures or if we should start worrying for our own lives.
This theory was cemented once we moved to our new house. About two weeks after the move, Philis the newt sadly succumbed to Archie’s evil life-force-sucking-abilities and was found dead.
Miraculously, Archie’s color started coming back at that point and he looked much healthier than he had looked in a while.
This, of course, was ultimate proof of his supernatural powers.
My daughter’s room (where Archie lives) is in the basement in our new house, and I was strongly considering accidentally tipping his bowl over one day, but I’d recently had ankle surgery and when I suggested it to a friend, he quickly stopped me by saying, “having a gimpy human limping down dangerous basement stairs is exactly what Archie wants!”.
After all, who would suspect a little old ‘ill’ fishy of a human’s demise?
He’s right. Besides, who knows what kind of monstrosities Archie would be capable of with the life essence of an entire human being at his disposal?
Jenna and I idly wonder what would happen if Archie and my grandfather were ever in the same room together. Since they are both apparently immortal, would there be a huge fight to the death with life essences flying everywhere?
Just to be safe we’ve decided to keep those two apart forever.
Archie still shares a room with Jenna, but she is constantly on guard. With every little sniffle she comes running to me asking if she looks sick, and glares at him sideways every time she walks past. I think he’s really getting to her though because lately she has even started having nightmares about him.
Maybe that is how it all begins…
Did you know I write books too? Below are the digital links. Happy reading!!! 🙂
