The Replacements Have Arrived

As previously reported, Goldfish Bob swam towards the light and went to the big pond in the sky. I was surprised he lasted so long, especially since he arrived at I time where the last thing I was expecting to be was a fish owner. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I expected less to be lunch for a shark or to be trampled to death by a rampaging elephant, but owning fish was very low on my list of expectations. His first week was spent in a vase until Ms N so kindly brought up an old fish tank.

On Sunday we ventured to Pet Smart to browse for possible new occupants of that tank. Yesterday we went in with cash. An hour and $51 later, we left laden with supplies and two new additions to our family. Rainbow the betta fish and Hoover the bottom-feeding algae-eater came home with us. As did betta food, water treatment, a filter, hamster accessories, and a new hamster cage.

I almost had a record-setting day with Hoover. Hoover’s reaction to panicky situations is to adhere himself by the lips to a nearby surface and hold on with all his might. When I dumped the water he was in through the net so I could transfer him to his new home, he clung to the side of the cup. The water poured out of the cup, the fish did not. Now, most fish flop around wildly when not in water. Hoping for this, I held the cup top-down above the tank so he could fall in. Nope. I tapped on the cup hoping to scare him off. Nope. It crossed my mind that the only thing that might make him let go would be his own demise. That would be two pets killed in three days (one record) and a pet killed before it made it to it’s cage (another record). It wasn’t until I submerged the cup in the tank that he finally let go and swam away. Records averted.

Then came the hamster cage. We got two of the little rodents right after Christmas – Snowball for Emily and Spongebob for Alex. They are both males and after a while male hamsters get territorial. There is a risk that two males will fight viciously over territory, but that didn’t exactly happen with us. In our case, Spongebob became Snowball’s bitch. Snowball would take every morsel of food and almost all of the bedding up into the top compartment of the cage, and Spongebob was left in a cold corner with a tiny circle of woodchips around him to mark off his territory. Whenever Snowball would enter the common area, Spongebob would leap up onto the bars of the cage and climb away. It was a sad, sad sight that had to change.

We got Spongebob an Xtreme Critter Trail kit complete with a slide and an external wheel contraption that rotates around a vertical axis while the hamster runs through the wheel. I put him into the new cage and closed the door; he spent the next four hours trying to chew his way through the bars to get back out. Apparently he doesn’t appreciate the coolness of his situation. This morning when we got up we looked at his cage. He drug his bedding and food out of the main compartment and turned the wheel into his new home, thereby removing any possibility of using it for exercise. And the fat bastard needs the excercise.

Emily asked if the fish were male or female. I have absolutely no idea. It’s hard to tell with fish. The hamsters are easy – their nads are so huge that if humans were similarly proportioned we’d be packing bowling balls. Ms N and I realized how easy it is to tell with sharks during a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. That was actually kinda freaky. I told her I didn’t know and said for the sake of simplicity I was assuming they were male. “Darn,” she said, dejectedly. “That means I’m still the only girl in the house.”

One sex-assumption-change operation later, and Rainbow became the second.