Bon Voyage Dennis
The great Potts family goldfish experiment has ended after three short days. Yes, on Saturday Logan got a goldfish at the Founders Day event held downtown and yesterday we bid the belly-up fellow adieu.When we first received that orangey little guy in his plastic bag and dumped him in his little bowl we asked Logan to help us name him. He selected Dennis - non-Playhouse Disney aficionados won't know, but those of you with youngsters in your life will recognize the name. Dennis, you see, is the goldfish on a Disney cartoon named Stanley. Dennis is a genius quite frankly and he chats quite a bit with his best friend Stanley - a young school aged chap that has a thing for animals including his own pets (a cat named Elsie and a dog named Harry in addition to the fish). Each episode Stanley and Dennis take a journey into the Great Big Book of Everything to learn about an specific animal (or two...two different 'episodes' per half-hour show.) Logan enjoys this show although we don't see it all that often lately, and he loves that fish. So Dennis was our fish's name.
We watched Dennis.
We fed Dennis.
We bought a net so we could catch Dennis and change his water.
We said good night to Dennis.
We told him stories.
We sang to him.
And then Monday night (just three short days into his stay with us) when I went in to drop a few flakes of food in his bowl I found him floating belly up in the tank. Daddy had funeral duty while I got Logan preoccupied with a bath. The tank, apparently, was a lost cause too and now takes up residence at the town dump.
Of course Logan saw Daddy holding up Dennis' tank - fish still floating lifelessly. "There Dennis!" he says, running to see his pal.
"Ummm, well no, honey, ahh.." and we, not quite ready to get into the whole - Dennis is dead thing with a nearly 2 year old - settled on our story. Dennis has gone back to live with Stanley.
"Dennis see Elsie?" Logan did ask me later.
"Yes, and Harry too," I assured him.
And that's been that.
I'm assuming another fish won't reach death's door under our watch anytime soon. Apparently unless I have a filter running I'm like the fishie grim reaper or something. Who knows. At least it wasn't a hamster...
posted by Sandy at
5:06 PM
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