The Circle of Life

Sorry, the title does not mean that our little guy finally decided to show up...I certainly wish that was the case. No, instead of that we woke up to a sad, sad day today. Our fish, Butch, hasn't been looking too good as of late. He wasn't swimming around as much and didn't seem to eat much of his food. This morning he looked pretty bad, but we went to church and when we came back he had settled peacefully to the bottom. He's gone to a better place now, and I felt that I needed to write him a studly obituary to capture just how great of a fish he is.

First off, I've never personally owned a fish (except for the goldfish that I got in Joy School when I was 3 and dumped a ton of fish food in his bowl...he died the same day I got him...) but from other people's fish that I have seen they generally tend to be a little boring. Most fresh water fish don't have very exciting colors, are small, and don't really interact with anyone outside of the bowl. However, from the beginning Butch has been the exact opposite. He was a decent sized little guy and had a dark blue, shiny color. This is him right when we got him, he was such a studly little guy!

He was such a feisty little fella. He had such an attitude, too! I'm sure he thought that he dominated the room. Anytime we would walk into the room he'd immediately swim right to where we were and try to stare us down. Oftentimes he would flare up huge, and if you've never seen a betta fish do that then you should because it's pretty impressive. So he was extremely active and always a part of our family.

Then we moved to our apartment in Wymount. We didn't find out until after we moved in that we weren't supposed to have a fish, but by that point the little guy was a member of our family, we couldn't just get rid of him! So we nicknamed him our little Jew and we hid him in many of the different closets we have in our apartment anytime anyone official had to come in. In fact, one time we had to go out of town but they were replacing our carpets so he stayed in the closet the whole weekend! He was such a trooper too, as soon as we'd take him out he'd let us know what he thought about the whole thing and swell up all big at us.

Another thing we had to deal with was keeping him fed when we'd go on vacations. Do you know how awkward it is taking a fishbowl (with no lid) in a car? Speed bumps can be perilous. I still remember Katelyn freaking out because I hit a bump too fast and she got "fish juice" all over her pants. Butch didn't seem to mind too much, and he did just fine at my cousins' apartments.

By the way, it's kinda hard to take a picture of a circular fish bowl...everything gets distorted.

So anyways, we've estimated he lived past 2 years old (which is decent for a betta fish) and spent a year and 8 months of that time with us. He's pretty much been with us since the beginning of the marriage. I know he probably wanted to stick it out to welcome our little guy into the world, but as it is he kept us company pretty much till the very end. I'll miss his aggressive little stare downs, his burrowing in the roots of the plant we got him, his little bubble nests, and most of all his presence in our hearts and lives. Butch, you are and forever will be the one and only, true blue through and through, Butch Anderson!