Hey, Waiter! There's a FLY in My Fishbowl!

As you may recall from a previous post, I have a couple of "office pets," Arphaxad and Amminadab. (See below.) They are goldfish I bought for maybe 50 cents apiece from the "feeder fish" tank, and so far they are at least a year old. Cecil Markovitch recently got some goldfish, and they keep dying, so he asked me the other night what he was doing wrong. "I only change their water once a week," he said, and I told him A&A get fresh water every Friday. "Maybe it's because they're in the window," he said, and I told him A&A are right on the window sill, enjoying the view of the lake. Then he said maybe it was because his goldfish were cheap, but I told him A&A were cheap goldfish too, so we have no idea what the difference is.

Figure 1: Arphaxad and Amminadab

(photo credit: Palm Tree Fan)

Today was a very good day for A&A, and not such a good day for a fly. A&A got a special treat today. Usually they get fish food flakes every morning (except weekends) and then they spend a lot of time attacking their plant and eating algae. They also beg every day for some of my broccoli and carrot, so sometimes I indulge them. Today, however, they got some MEAT. (Richard Bonomo must be so proud!) A ginormous fly was buzzing around my office, and my office mate swatted it so it fell on the window sill, mostly dead but still a little twitchy. We debated about what to do with it and finally decided to toss it into A&A's bowl. At first they studiously ignored it, but eventually Amminadab (that's the smaller orange one) grabbed the fly and swam around the bowl with it. Arphaxad (the larger white one) appeared to be a vegetarian, but later it got in on the act, and soon they were each pulling the fly in opposite directions in a fishy tug-of-war. My office mate had originally voiced some skepticism that A&A would want a fly in their fish bowl (after all, we wouldn't want a fly in our house!) but even as I write this Amminadab is chewing on the unfortunate insect. Why not? Wouldn't flies fall into the water in nature? And this way the fly did not die in vain. As my office mate's husband said, it's the ultimate in recycling!

Famous Hat