Our adopted fish, “Mr. Beta”, passed away quietly yesterday. I say he passed away quietly because, frankly, fish don’t make a lot of noise, right? I mean, maybe his passing was not quiet to him, but it was to us.

We don’t know how old Mr. Beta was – he belonged to a parent of one of Tracey’s co-workers, who then brought Mr. Beta into her workplace to swim around in a dinky little aquarium without anything to keep him interested or occupied for a long time. Last year, Tracey felt sorry for the poor beast, and proceeded to bring him home and set him up in a nice two-gallon aquarium filled with a hollowed-out phony log with lots of colorful phony sea stuff and rocks that he could swim around in.

Mr. Beta seemed to enjoy his surroundings a lot, and while I never quite grasped onto him as a pet, he did become a fixture in the household, if only for the psychedelic colors the light in his aquarium would toss across the livingroom at night when the lights were all out. As a fish, Mr. Beta lived life to his fishy fullest – at least I think he did. I don’t think he liked getting his water changed much, but I have a sense he knew that was part of the routine every couple of weeks. He liked to be fed and would get all excited when he saw you around his aquarium – he’d start flapping his gills anticipating his daily meal. He didn’t, however, like the drawer that sat directly under the countertop beneath him being closed too fast – in his fishy brain he must have though it was some kind of undersea volcanic eruption.

What more can be said about Mr. Beta that hasn’t already been said? He was born and swam and ate and slept like other beta fishes do. He probably lived as long a life as most betas, and he was lucky to have escaped the Petsmarts of the world where they have betas on display swimming around in little Tupperware containers. That can’t be much of a life – probably as stimulating as a Celine Dion greatest hits CD.

So, for our finny friend, it is finis – in every sense of the word. Thanks for having us around for a little while, Mr. Beta, I hope you enjoyed your time with us.