At any given time in life when we embark upon a path of stewardship of another of God's creatures, we inevitably learn so much more about ourselves then the animal or creature we strive to care for.
Today, I learned that I am either:
1) Lenny from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, or;
2) JoJo the Idiot Circus Boy from the movie, Tommy Boy.
As some of you know, I've been raising a channel catfish, Diego, in a small home aquarium with the hopes of releasing him in one of our neighborhood retention ponds this spring.
Over the course of the last (8) months or so, Diego has had the benefit of mutual living with fatheads, bluegill, livebearers, Florida flagfish, and zebra danios. By and large, Diego had rejected all other fish save for one single fathead and one bluegill.
Several weeks ago, in what must have amounted to an overnight rage incident, Diego ended the life of the bluegill. This caused much sadness in my household, and I was grateful to find a willing ear here on the forum to express my sorrows.
At any rate, that left just Diego and this unnamed, yet robust fathead. I likened these two, catfish and fathead, to a Horse and Goat similar to what one might see at a given stable. You know, where they have a goat present to befriend the horse, or horses, as the long days pass.
Well, some disagreement must have occurred, or some malevolent spirit set forth, again overnight, thus resulting in the disappearance of the sole-surviving fathead as of yesterday morning. Yet again, our household was cast into sadness.
But always looking forward, we knew that spring was around the corner, and that Diego would soon be set free to kill and maim as he saw fit. Planning was underway for a great & festive party to commemorate this joyous occasion of liberation.
Feeling that Diego's imminent call for freedom and subsequent release was to occur in the next week or so, I endeavored to change his tank water thus enabling him to live out his remaining aquarium days in relative comfort.
As always, I added a bit of kosher salt to the new water. For some reason, I threw in an extra measure or two of kosher salt.
As is my ritual every weekday morning, I prepare the coffee and then check on the aquarium. The first thing I noticed was that Diego did not have the usual guilty look in his eye after having dispatched a fellow tank resident during the prior night. He did, however, have a very placid, sanguine look. This placid, sanguine look coupled with his apparent immobility told the story I did not want to hear. Diego was dead.
In essence, I think I 'pickled' him in water just ever so slightly too salty. So in essence, I raised this fish only to kill him in the end.
Damn Diego!
