You have got to be kidding me

Duncan has decided he wants a lizard. What he really wants is a dragon, but since those are hard to come by, he's willing to settle for a lizard. So today we went to the pet store and looked at four-legged reptiles. It was most exciting and a little disturbing. We got to watch a gecko actually shed its skin. It walked around the inside of its fake stone cave scraping its head against the wall until the skin pealed away. And once its head and front legs were free, it reached back and started eating the dead skin. Can I just say at this point that I like my pets not to eat their own skin? That's like bringing home a masochistic zombie and naming it Spot.

So, in an effort to distract my son from lizards, I pointed out that birds can actually be trained and they pay attention to you and they're pretty and they don't eat their feathers. Duncan readily switched over to wanting a bird instead, and even wanted to bring one home RIGHT NOW. I told him that bringing home a bird without Dad knowing about it would be bad. He pointed out that Dad would know about it when he got home, but I had to explain that you really can't just surprise Dad with things like that. He's already not very enthusiastic about us getting another duck and starting up with chickens come spring. Which brought up the point that Duncan is going to be getting a duck in a couple months, so we really shouldn't get another bird now.

At this point I diverted his attention to a fish. We have had fish many times before and it hasn't traditionally gone well. Any fish brought into our house will wind up dead, and generally not in an "everything dies eventually" kind of way. Duncan even said that when the fish does die he would be sad. With all the tenderness of a loving mother I told him that it's just a fish and you can't really get that upset over it. I knew he would get upset anyway, but it wasn't anything I would have to deal with for a couple months at least. I had every intention of trying REALLY HARD to keep the fish alive this time.

So we got a really pretty silvery beta. Duncan named him Firefly before we even walked out of the store. I thought it was a pretty cool name for a pretty cool fish. We came home and I washed out the bowl that had held our last beta and currently was holding nothing but dust. I filled it with water and put the stress drops in it, then added the fish. A very pretty fish right on top of the piano.

Jump ahead six hours. We're trying to sit down and have a late, Friday night dinner. Duncan is taking forever because he says he can't find the fish in the bowl. That's ridiculous, we say, of course it's in the bowl. Come and eat. An hour later and dinner is over and it's time for bed, but again Duncan's hanging out at the piano and now he has Jonathon with him. We can't find the fish, they say. Go to bed, we say. So they go to bed. Jonathon comes down to get something and says, very quietly, "Will you look for the fish? I really can't see it in there." So I look, and guess what? I can't see it either. I get a flashlight and look behind the piano and there's little Firefly. Already snuffed. There's a fish-sized spot in the dust on the piano right outside the bowl. It didn't even make it six hours in my care. But I don't care about the damn fish. I've got Duncan upstairs convinced that it's just a trick of the light and the curve of the glass that's keeping him from enjoying his new fish.

I got in the car and raced to the pet store to get another silvery beta. Unfortunately, the pet store was already closed and there was no way Duncan wasn't going to figure things out in the morning, so I had to come home and tell him what happened. There were tears on Duncan's part. Everyone else was laughing at me. Less than six hours. I broke my own record.