Fishes are People too.

I thought I'd say a few words of about that much maligned branch of the tree of life: fish. Specifically, Koi and Gold Fish. I'll not go into that horrid episode where I killed the first population in my pond by pumping them full of fresh water--OVERNIGHT. That's a terrible thing to do to fish; but I swear to you, it was an accident.

My pond was leaking water something serious and I left the hose on overnight. What is most heinous is that I have a degree in biology and should have known better.

Fast forward to the restocking but with the problem not assuaged by Winter--two Koi and a dozen or more goldfish at PetLand or some such outlet but the water level kept going down and I tried to keep up with it. I did, but the water level went down to where the local cats had access to the fish. The first fish to go were the Koi (they are somewhat sluggish in cold water). One was eaten outright and the other was injured to the point where he died in the pond. I fished him out and left him as road kill--some scavenger was appreciative). The goldfish succumbed one by one to the point where there were only 5 left. I fished out 4 and couldn't locate the fifth. I set up the four goldfish in a 10 gallon (you can put as many goldfish in a 10 gallon as you like but you must be sure to properly oxygenate the water--they will let you know they are suffocating when they breathe near the surface).

I had the fifth goldfish up for lost when my son spotted him and we managed to bring him back to the fold--I named him Sacco. Now I have the five chilling in my 10 gallon tank while I await the repair of the pond by my twin boys who insist--having inherited their mother's OCD--that there must be a continuation of the pond that they constructed. Ok, so here I am with Sacco, Sacco2, BuglyEyes, BuglyEyes2, and Psycho (being as 20% of people are psychopaths, and there is no reason to believe such a characteristic is not biologically conserved across species. lol)

The more I study animal life around me, the more I see a crazy ass intelligence that makes me wonder why we don't exhibit a greater intelligence by a factor that lends some credence to the ratio of our respective brain sizes. These little guys know when feeding time is (6Am, 12Pm, and 6Pm) and have developed a behavior that clearly communicates expectation to me (they line up side by side and look in my direction). They also play (well, at least Sacco2 does) with the bubbles; but all chase each other around in some sort of mating game (or so Google tells me).