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We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others. — Will Rogers

The Fallacy of Fish as Pets 2004.09.02.23:23

The co-worker who's desk is to my immediate left recently got a Tetra in a glass jar as a "pet". I use the word extremely liberally here. Our boss (we answer to the same manager) got her two more, so that the one would not be lonely.

Understand, first off, that this isn't a very big container. It's a perfect cylinder of heavy glass, with no top. Like an extremely unimaginative drinking glass (if you were, say, André the Giant). Probably holds about a pint and a half or so (judging by my first-hand experience with pints). It's about 3/4 full with water, so we'll call the actual water-area one pint. In this, though, there is about an inch or so of bright blue gravel at the bottom, and a plastic plant of some sort that curves in on itself within the confines of the glass. And the fish. The three fish.

Fish are not pets. You can't take them for a walk, they don't come when you call (of course, neither do my cats, but in their case it's clear from the look in their eyes that I'm being purposefully ignored). You can't play with fish the way you would a reptile, unless the fish are piranha and your idea of a pet reptile is a Komodo Dragon. But this subtle distinction is lost on my co-worker.

She's like a child with its first kitten. She can't leave the poor fish alone. How they must gurgle a watery sigh of relief when she leaves for the day. She'll tap on the glass. She'll spin the jar around one way, then the other (something I compared to her riding out a 5.0 earthquake in her apartment). And once in a while, she'll just pull the jar closer to her and, well, almost hug it, for lack of a better descriptive. I don't think she's really hugging it in the sense you'd hug a puppy, but she's clearly taking some degree of comfort from the presence of the little fishies.

God help all of us within earshot if she comes in one morning to find any one of them floating. I'm just not sure how you explain the cycle of life to a 30-year-old married woman.

# [/funny]


Who Am I:
Randy J. Ray
Software Engineer

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· Planetary: All Over the World and Other..., Warren Ellis et al.
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· Say You Want a Revolution (The Invisibles, Book 1), Grant Morrison et al
· You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of..., Oswald T. Pratt and Scott Dickers
· Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson
· Rising Stars : Born In Fire (Vol. 1), J. Michael Straczynski

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