My family has a knack for morbid humor when it come to pets. It’s kinda our “thing”, mostly because we may or may not be the cause of it. We used to have pets, several of them at a time actually. We had four (or five?) fishes and three hermit crabs. All of which died in an incredible amount of time from each other…. give or take a week. Mine lasted the longest most of the time though. Or I just got extremely lucky. Don't get me wrong; We loved our pets. But I don't think they loved us enough to keep their will to live…
My brother and I received our first pets when we were seven, on Christmas Day. They were these two beta fish with long graceful fins. Mine was red and my brother’s was blue. Opposite colors for siblings that couldn't be more different. I named mine Beta and he named his Angel…... and apparently they were both male. My brother never changed his name. There wasn't really a need to because Angel died two days later. At first, it was extremely shocking and sad, until we got him a new purple one that he named “Angel 2”. We teased the fishes with mirrors; they would think it was another male in their territory and they would fan out their fins and ready themselves to fight (hence their name). Then Angel 2 died three days later. I’m sure Heaven welcomed them with open fins and nicer tanks. My brother cried and I didn't feel a thing… because it wasn't my fish. Mine was still alive and falling for the mirror trick every few seconds. Karma remedied that shortly. A week later, Beta had a lot of gray junk hanging and leaking from his fins. Turns out it was fungus (the aquatic version). My brothers and I were heading off to school so we didn't have time to take him to the vet. We isolated him in a small yellow cup with a little water in it and hoped for the best. If I could've kissed him goodbye, I would've, but I didn't want to catch fish fungus and my mother told me she was taking him ”to the vet”. When you're seven years old, you trust your mother and then pray that you'll make it to school on time. We were still late. Moreover, when I got home, my seven year old self was internally screaming when Beta wasn't in his tank.
“There was nothing we could do,” Mom had said. Well for one thing, she could have actually taken him to the vet instead of flushing him down the toilet while I wasn't looking. We did the logical thing and promised ourselves to never get another pet.
Until a year later when my brother and I won a couple of goldfish at a local fair. He named his “Angel 3” and I named mine “Goldie”. Neither of us really had that much hope for them, but it was worth a shot. If anything, we wanted to prove that none of us were cursed. The family made a bet on how long these guys would last. Our parents said two days (because that was their average lifespan); we said two weeks and bet two dollars each. For almost two weeks we tapped their tanks, and lost at staring contests with them even though we knew fish didn’t blink. We thought it was hilarious anyway. Occasionally, we won when they looked away, but our fish usually played to win. As the days went by, I was thinking of a new name for Goldie, and I had a growing shred of hope for my aquatic pal. A few days later, on the way back from school, I thought about calling him “Rex” … until my brother and I arrived home. We called for our mother after seeing that our fishes’ tanks were missing. She was in the bathroom. We both looked at each other, I (being the optimist that I am) bet a dollar that our fishes were flushed away…. again. My brother bet the opposite, we shook on it and went to our mother. Guess who got the dollar? Turns out after cleaning the tanks, our mother put the fishes back into their prisons, I mean, tanks, and forgot to put certain chemicals into the water. Certain chemicals that keep them from going belly up when you're not looking. We were so close to making the two week mark. But since our mother was a serial fish killer and we weren't present at the scene when the crime was committed, we got two dollars from our parents. No more pets we swore, we were definitely cursed, no doubt about it. We said a short prayer hoping they were better off in their watery Heaven with the necessary chemicals to swim happily ever after. We never let our mother live down her fishy history with pets.
Please, by all means, guess what happened next. No, we didn't get another fish. We got crabs. Hermit crabs. When I was sixteen, someone had put the idea in our parents’ heads that these guys were some of the hardiest creatures on the face of this planet. They could survive without food for a couple of days (you know, if you’re the forgetful type of person), minimal cleaning, no chemicals, and they were very playful. My brother and I sighed, hugged each other and gave it a shot one last time. I named mine Hermes, after the Greek messenger of the gods. My brother named his Rex. We are honestly cursed. A couple of days after getting them, we thought Rex was dead because he wasn't moving since we got him. Considering our delightful history with pets, we put him in the garbage can. Until my brother and I looked at each other and opened it on a whim. Turns out Rex was still alive and scurrying! Unfortunately, a week later, Rex died for no explicable reason whatsoever (and I really mean it this time). How did we know? The entire house smelled like… well like something died. When we all woke up and dashed down the stairs, Hermes was clawing at the tank begging to get the hell out. I plucked him from the deathtrap, I mean prison, I mean tank, although I don't think I can call it that anymore. I held him in my hands and he started crawling up and down gratefully. Then, I started singing “ABC” by the Jackson Five, and he tried running off of my hand. Wasn't he the sweetest? Anyway, we got my brother a bigger hermit crab, and we didn't bother naming it because as soon as he entered the tank, he made a beeline for Hermes and started thrashing him. So, we got a different crab and named it Angel (I'm sure you can see where this is going). Hermit crabs (despite their name) really need the company of each other. So, we had to buy another one otherwise Hermes could literally die of loneliness. Hermes lived for two more months until the grim reaper decided to pay us a visit and we smelled the stench of death, yet again. I know I fed him, Mom fed him, I cleaned him, I played with him, he came to me when I called him. What the hell is wrong with our family?!
Like I said, we are cursed. Somebody down the family line must have done something unforgivable and got us cursed. Maybe someone in a past life ticked off a witch or something. Something to explain this painful and morbidly humorous history of lost causes. My brother gave up and never took care of Angel, so his fate was unfortunately, left to me. Angel hated me. Every time I cleaned him he would try and bite me and pinch me. He had an incredibly strong grip for such a tiny thing. It wasn't my fault my brother lost all hope for him! He should've been grateful I felt sorry enough to at least attempt to keep him alive. He hated me to the very core until the very end, which was a few painful months later. Although I really did hope that the crabby pain in the neck was in a better place now. We threw him in the garbage can, because at this point, our backyard was racking up quite the body count. For some reason, I actually kinda missed him. As of this point, the entire family had FINALLY given up on pets. No more accidents, no more pets from the store, crabs found on the beach, no more pinching and biting and watery farewells. We all made a solemn promise to each other.
Half way through spring semester of freshman year I got a call from my dad…. my family had babysat two puppies for a couple of weeks in November.
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