Ahhhh pets! Is it just me, or should pets actually be…pet-able??? What I would give for a sweet, cuddly dog.
Once in a while I attempt to be a good pet owner’s mother and actually clean the fish tank of the fishies that belong to my two youngest kids.
We have 10 now, and why I even bought the damn fish in the first place is beyond me since they do nothing but swim around and poop everywhere. My kids barely even remember to feed them so we have had to come up with a way to ensure the stupid things don’t die of starvation. If someone feeds them, they must first turn on the light inside the tank, then feed the things…and leave the light on. This way, if the light is off I know nobody loved them enough that day and take it upon myself to feed them. My oldest turns the light off at bedtime because the light annoys the crap out of her. This is how I make sure life…and light…is reset for the next day.
So yesterday my oldest was cleaning her newt tank because it was swimming in the dead blood worms he absolutely refused to eat.
It’s gross. There are tiny worms that look like long strings of poop everywhere!
She got Philis the Newt, named after a close friend of ours, Newton Philis (just to annoy the crap out of him), only about a week ago. The little sh#t refuses to eat! The newt I mean…not the man.
She has tried Aquatic Newt Food and freeze dried blood worms but it’s being ridiculously stubborn and she’s getting ridiculously worried.
One time she got a bit on its mouth and it just sat there staring at her with this annoyed expression and completely refused to lick it off, so it just stayed on its mouth until it went for a swim later.
Basically it’s being an asshole.
So anyway, she was siphoning the ignored blood worms out of its tank and made me start the siphoning process because she was scared of getting newt-water into her mouth.
I should mention at this point that Philis the Grumpy Newt is poisonous to humans.
Yup! If I ever piss my child off, all she has to do is dip Grumpy into a cup like a tea bag and I’m a goner.
Comforting!
After I narrowly avoided death and washed the tube, I decided I might as well clean the gross that was in the fish tank.
After sucking up EVERY FRIGGING DECORATION IN THE DAMN TANK, I finally got most of the crap out of there and left the bucket for Jenna to clean up.
After a minute she called me back and pointed into the poop bucket with a raised eyebrow, waiting for me to figure out what was wrong.
After a couple seconds I saw Silly-Fishy (as I have now nicknamed him) swimming around after being sucked through the siphoning tube. He was happily waiting to be released into the wild like he was on Finding Frigging Nemo!!!
I dumped his butt back in the tank and went about my business grumbling about stupid suicidal fish.
Our pet menagerie doesn’t end there; Jenna also has a sick Betta that has been alive (and sick) for like two years now and just refuses to give up. She has done every single thing she can think of to nurse him back to health, scouring the internet for over a year now, but the damn thing just refuses to help himself, and refuses to die.
Since neither of us have the heart to flush him or end him in any other way, we stare at him daily, feeling horrible. He totally thinks he’s a puppy though, and still has a great appetite, so every feeding time when he sees Jenna get his food, he swims to the front of the bowl and goes back and forth excitedly. He will even jump for the food if she holds it just above the water.
On second thought, maybe he’s just making the whole ‘sick’ thing up just to get attention.
The last pet she has is Chicken the Crested Gecko. It’s absolutely adorable and has gotten quite big since she first got it. She takes it out to play in the bathtub with her so it won’t get away (sans water of course), and its eyeballs get licked in the cutest way possible.
To clarify…I meant the gecko licks its own eyeballs. If Jenna was licking gecko eyeballs wherever she went I might start to get a smidge concerned about her sanity.
Gecko’s tend to drop their tail if scared or attacked so that they can get away while the mean gecko-eater is messing around with its abandoned wiggly tail. Jenna is deathly afraid of accidentally making this happen because apparently having a tail-less gecko simply won’t do.
In order to avoid a lifetime of ‘You ruined Chicken!’, accompanied by angry, accusatory glares, I absolutely refuse to touch the creature because I most definitely WILL be the one to make the damn tail wiggle away into the great beyond.
We all think Chicken the best pet we have.
It was very difficult getting them to keep still, but I hope you enjoyed their pictures.
Did you know I write books too? Below are the digital links. Happy reading!!! 🙂
Newts like to be fed pizza & beer. Just say’in.
Haha why do I think we’re talking about different Newts?