This was one of my favorite newspaper columns written back in 1997 when I lived in Salt Lake City. I'm posting it here because I can. Anyway, it's still funny.
Lately I’ve been confused about the double standard concerning fish. Are we supposed to take care of them, like the whole “Save the Dolphins” thing, or just torture them before swallowing, like the standard “All-You-Can-Eat-Fish-Fry” thing? Around our house, we do both. For example, take the fish in our backyard, which live in luxury in our three nice ponds; my husband is obsessed with their welfare. He starts each day by going out for a gill count. Then he feeds them, turns on a little waterfall so they won’t be bored, changes the water and generally fusses over them like a mother hen. But then last weekend he took our young son Zack fishing and came home with a dead trout in a plastic bag, blood still dabbling from its once-lively mouth.
"What is that?" I yelled.
"A fish! Actually a spotted trout, what do you think?" Mitch said proudly, holding it aloft for inspection.
"I guess I meant, what happened to him?"
"Dad caught him,” Zack said. “He was flopping around in the bag until just a few minutes ago, but there was a lot of traffic, and I think he died at the STOP sign on the corner. His name is Floaty," he added. “Can we have him for dinner?"
"I made a pot roast for dinner," I said, shielding my eyes from the horror of the recently deceased Floaty. "From an unnamed source."
Somehow Mitch is able to throw a worm-covered hook into a river and trick an innocent creature—two if you count the worm- into an untimely death, yet he still carries on like a proud papa over his backyard babies--and I do mean babies. Not long ago, the pond fish got weird. Seeing them thrashing about, jumping in and out of the water in frenzied abandon, I hurriedly called my shrink friend, Dr. Laura. (Not the Dr. Laura, a different one.) Although she usually deals with nutty people, I figured she could spot a neurosis whatever the species. I was right; she saw mine immediately. Then she agreed that the situation at hand was not psychosomatic, declaring that I indeed had a pond full of "sick puppies." We decided to seek even more expert advice.
The first guy, a.k.a. Expert #1, was a clerk at the local pet store. He said flat-out, "They’ve obviously been poisoned by some fertilizer in the neighborhood which has drifted over into your pond. They’re as good as dead.” Ignoring him, I called Expert # 2, the owner of an aquarium shop, who said, "Fish are tricky. You never know with fish. Could be anything." Still hoping for a miracle cure, I called a third expert, a salesman at a local nursery, who said, "They might have a parasite which is making them itch. You could try either feeding them medicine or adding antibiotics to the water."
"What’s the difference?" I asked.
"About a hundred dollars."
I opted for the less expensive but still costly--don’t ask--treatment, which seemed to work, and the next day everyone but me returned to normal. One month later there were countless newborns, indistinguishable from specks of dirt, except for the swimming. Mitch has bonded with them already. He has designated the smallest pond as "the nursery" and is determined to save the babies from the natural course of events that decimated the last Guppy Boom: getting eaten by their parents. Mitch says the mother did it, I say the father--but I digress. He now has his hands full fishing out the babies with a net every morning. Despite that, he thinks nothing of blithely saying, just before throwing a hunk of salmon on the grill, "I moved three of the babies to the top pond today. I think they’ll be safer up there, don’t you?" Do you see my confusion?
In case you wondered, Floaty ended up in the freezer where he remained until garbage pick-up day, at which time I sent him packing, causing Zack to exclaim, "Mom, how could you throw away Floaty?" The obvious moral of the story is: Never name your garbage.
No comments:
Post a Comment