Fish Tales, plus an unrelated bonus picture

Let me be clear. I do not care for fish. Let me be clearer. I will eat fish, and in fact, I love to eat fish. I even like visiting aquariums, quite a lot. But as pets? Not a fan. They are boring, with a high maintenance to enjoyment ratio.

BUT! I love my wife and daughter. So after something like three years of cajoling on Hollie's behalf, last week I agreed to get fish. She made the point, accurately, that LG would love feeding, looking at, shouting at, and otherwise talking about the fish. We know this because in recent weeks we've been taking her to Petsmart as a fun outing. She runs around, talks to the birds, rats, hamsters and cats, and occasionally runs off with a dog toy. The highlight of any given trip, though, is the giant wall of fish.

So went to Petsmart as a family, found a tank appropriate for the space we have, and invited LG to pick out decorations for her tank. Of all the decorations to be found at the store--the mermaids, skulls, treasure chests, divers, caves, ruins and other assorted flotsam--she chose a soccer ball and a unicorn. We didn't really care what she chose, but no matter what else we put in front of her, she turned it down cold. The mind of a toddler is a strange thing. She also wanted a blue plant, although the one she originally chose was way more expensive than I was willing to spend on a lump of extruded plastic, so we got a three-pack of assorted plants, one of which was blue.

The unicorn and blue plant didn't lend themselves to many gravel colors, so we went with day-glo. After letting the tank run for 24 hours, LG and I went back to the store to pick up the goldfish. I think the tank, decorations and water treatment was about $50; the two fish were $0.13 each. Boring as they are, at least fish are cheap.

The result?

Meet our two small comet goldfish, Pelé and Lancelot. Or rather, meet Pelé, because Lancelot is always hiding. You can sort of see him through the foliage in the center. He looks like Pelé, but he's white/translucent. (sidebar: there are no good unicorn-inspired names. Charlie? Amalthea? Unico? Someone needs to write a better unicorn story.)

And her reaction?

Trust me, she's excited. She runs into the living room right after she wakes up in the morning so she can feed them. She takes anyone who comes into the house over to the tank to show off the fish. And she makes us drag a chair over to the tank several times a day so she can poke at the tank (yeah, yeah, don't tap the tank. They're $0.13 fish. I'll enforce no tapping when we spend more than a buck.)

I still don't like fish. But I love that they make her happy.

On a completely unrelated note, I must share the following picture. This is definitely my favorite picture of the last three months, and possibly my favorite picture ever.

I had been lamenting the fact that Matt Smith might only do one more season of Doctor Who, but I think I'm over it. Meet your next Doctor! She's got everything you need. A sonic screwdriver, a nerdy outfit, a fun fashion accessory (she wears a fleece hat indoors. it's fine, fleece hats are cool.), and I like to think she's saving a tiny swirly red planet from some horrible fate.

All in all, she's living up to her moniker. Little Geek, indeed.