Flushed

Jack loves fish. There are few things that get him quite as excited as he does when fish are around. Every time we go to Meijer, he points in the general direction of the pet department and yells, "ish!" When we actually get to the aquariums, he starts jumping up and down in the cart yelling, "ish! ish!" over and over again. Since he is so bonkers about them, we decided that he would probably enjoy having some underwater pets. So last weekend we bought an aquarium and essential supplies. We set it up, let it run for a couple of days, and then bought two gold'ish, named Dwight and Jorge.

Jack in the box...

Helping Daddy set up the tank.

And then there were ish! As you can see, he was quite enamored with them.

Jack wasn't the only one appreciative of the new pets.

Now. I hope you realized from the title of this post that this story does not have a happy ending. Poor Jack. His Mommy and Daddy have a history of terrible luck with aquatic creatures. (The worst was probably when we came back to a 110 degree apartment with broken air conditioning and two boiled fish.) Jorge started looking bad the first night, and Dwight looked healthy and energetic. But about 30 hours after purchasing the fish (six hours past the refund deadline) Dwight suddenly started swimming strangely, plummeted to the gravel...and was promptly sucked into the filter. Well, the back half of him was at least. It was not a pretty sight. A toilet funeral was held shortly after.

Valiantly, Jorge soldiered on until the next day. He was actually looking quite perky Wednesday morning. But by lunchtime he was swimming on his side. And by early afternoon I had flushed him down the toilet too. Since his ishs' demise, Jack keeps going over to the tank trying to find his new friends. It's kind of sad, actually.

After a few days of mourning (and some research) we are ready to try again, so by next week Jack will hopefully have some more 'ish. That last longer than two days.