There are two hard and fast rules about the Thompsons that I will now enumerate for your edification. There used to be three, but the first one, which was “The Thompsons don’t do girls” seems a bit obsolete. The remaining two are “A meal at the Thompsons is one in which water is spilled” and “The Thompsons’ Pets Do Not Survive Long.”
Remember the fate of Bradford Crab, Elizabeth Crab, and Rebecca Crab? Mark flung one off his finger, not being aware that crabs, uh, pinch, and it consequently died. Then when we got another to replace it, one of them ate the other, and then died of food poisoning. So much for crabs. Betta fish were no better. My sister kept all hers for years, my neighbor had hers a long time, too, but ours lasted about 3 months.
Then we got the Grow-A-Frog. Little see-through tadpole that turns into a frog before your eyes, and when you send off for adult frog food, they send you a “Froggy Friend.” Nice. But nowhere do they tell you that the things grow to be so large they should be housed in a 20 gallon tank, nor are they up front about the life span of the African Clawed Frogs. 25+ years! I wasn’t daunted by that, because of our Rule. But months went by, and the murky water they were housed in didn’t seem to phase them. We regularly forgot to feed them, but still they lived. They simply didn’t know or believe our family Rule about Pets. I finally broke down and bought a tank I didn’t need to clean every 4 days. As. if. Because of a misunderstanding about what kind of frogs we had, I bought a 6 gallon tank (sorry), and even a plastic plant, and still we hardly paid them any attention. Someone suggested we name them in hopes we would gain affection for them, so name them we did. Their names are Claude and Claudette (pun intended, and yes we really do have a male and female and can tell the difference), and I do occasionally hear them singing to each other in the evening, which is pretty cool, but affection? No. It didn’t happen. However, since we have these frogs, I feel we should at least make of show of caring for them.
You’re probably wondering about now who Finbar Elmer is and how he fits into this story, seeing as his name is in the title. Well, I’ll tell you. We have this six gallon tank that should be cleaned every 2-4 weeks (more on that later), and nothing in it that we truly care about. I bought the tank at an Aquatic store that has the most amazing displays of fish I’ve ever seen outside a public aquarium, and they’ve got sting-rays!, and the wonderful people there (whom I recently found out homeschooled their two sons, the younger being the owner of the store) told us we could have fish in with our frogs. I finally broke down and bought two Tiger Barbs for Ben as a reward for Not Chewing his Fingers for six months. Okay. What really happened was we had a spare half-hour to kill last Friday, and we did so very pleasantly in this store, during which time I had the brainstorm (or hare-brained idea) of buying fish for our tank and telling Ben that was his gift for not chewing on his fingers (he had previously suggested a Chik-Fil-A shake, but when one gets one, they all want one). The coincidence is Ben chose the very fish I thought most beautiful. He got to choose them and name them, and they are his. They are Finbar Elmer and Flipper Stormfin (with a nod to Jennings and Redwall).
But go back to our rules, in which Thompsons’ Pets Don’t Survive Long, and the following narrative may explain it. Fish are not as hardy as those dumb frogs, who didn’t understand or ignored our Rule. After I bought the fish, I remembered they needed the water temperature to be 76; ours was at 66 (I was hoping to knock a few months off that 25+year life span). Saturday Mark went with Bradford and bought a heater. When they say the tank needs to be cleaned about every 2 weeks, I ignored that with the frogs, cleaning it about every 5-7 weeks. Last night, after noticing Finbar was exhibiting odd behaviour, I cleaned it. I also called my Fish Store, and they told me to come in with a sample of the water. This morning I cleaned the tank again, grabbed a sample, and Ben and I headed off to the store in the rain (the whole neighborhood being in the rain, not just the store).
The others watched Mary Poppins for the umpteenth time, and I was very clear that Bradford and Nate needed to know where Patie was when I called. I called when they needed to make PBJ for everyone, and when Bradford answered, he assured me that he knew both how to mix up peanut butter with the mixer if that were necessary and where Patie was. I hung up and felt so good about the state of things at home under the care of Bradford and Nathaniel that Ben and I popped in to the Natural Market to pick up some things we were running low on.
But I digress. The lovely people at the fish store tested my water and showed me what I needed to fix it. Then I asked the girl, who now knows we have regular African Clawed Frogs and not Dwarf Clawed Frogs, what size tank they should be in… oh, at least a 10-gallon tank, or maybe even a 20, and they’ll probably grow larger!?!. Good grief! That original $10 Grow-A-Frog purchase for the sake of a science lesson has turned out to be very expensive. In their defense, Grow-a-Frog will, upon request, send me a special conveyance for sending the frogs back to them, which they would rather me do than dump them into the nearest local waterway. But honestly, they are the only pets that have lasted in our home for well over a year, and I’m loathe to part with such a relatively easy-care pet. Besides, they are a conversation piece.
The short story is after Ben applied the treatment, Finbar seems to be doing better. Hoo-Ray. Because they really are lovely little fish.
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