Off the hook

Most of you will remember that I became a murderer last spring.  I killed Spencer's betta fish, Paul.  I do not think, though, that I have ever fully confessed my crime.  If you want to refresh your memory before we get into it, you can read the first part of Paul's death here and the second part of his death (including his funeral) here.

Here's my full confession.  This is how I killed Paul.

I felt like the filter in the tank wasn't doing a good enough job of cleaning the whole tank.  It filtered stuff out of the water, but there was a lot of debris piling up on the rocks.  So.  I took a knife and sort of stirred up the rocks so that the filter would suck all that crap out of the water.  Stirring up the rocks caused all of Paul's poop to poison the water with either too much ammonia or too much nitrite- we never were sure which one.

By the time we realized there was a problem Paul was beyond saving, although I tried.

About a week after Paul died Spencer said he missed having a fish.  Off we went to Petco and home we came with Piggy.

Michael is working shorter hours this week because of the 4th, so he left for work a little later than usual yesterday.  Usually he is gone by 6:30, but he was actually here when Elliott and I got up.  It's nice to have the extra help in the morning.  Anyway, he was sitting in the glider with Elliott while I washed dishes.  He told me that something was wrong with Piggy.  I glanced at the tank.

I said, "yeah.  He's dead." 

Piggy up and died on us on Thursday.  He was alive when we got up.  He was alive when Michael fed him.  Then, he was just dead.  And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.  I am off the hook.  This cannot be blamed on me.  Does anybody know the average life span of a betta? We had him for a little more than 14 months.

I called Spencer in Tucson and told him.  I wanted to let him know that we were going to go ahead and bury Piggy without him.  I was prepared to keep Piggy in the freezer until he comes home, but I really didn't want to, so I was relieved when Spencer said it was OK.  His exact words were, "it's OK for you to bury him without me.  And then you and daddy can just go to the store and buy me a new fish".

I dug a hole.  Michael dropped him in.  We said no kind words about the poor departed soul. 

Then we moved the bricks that had been on top of Paul's grave over to Piggy's grave.  Caring and compasionate people would clean the bird poop off.  I guess we are not those people. 

Ginger and Elliott were witnesses.  Neither of them cared much. 

I'm getting kind of tired of having a fish.  I might be willing to bribe Spencer with a Thomas the Train toy if he agrees to not get another fish.

That's quality parenting right there.