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dragonlady7I forgot to change my fishs' water (now that is an odd plural possessive) and realized tonight that they're sitting there in filth. So I decanted each fish into a clean little container and dosed them up with Bettamax as a pick-me-up, and figured I'd let them sort of soak there a while before I cleaned their normal tanks and put them back in. Seeing as it's 2 AM and I'm not all here and would probably break the tanks if I tried to clean them.
I set the two fish beside each other on the coffee table, where my computer is.
They are, by the way, Siamese Fighting Fish. Highly aggressive, and behavioral scientists love playing with them because their aggressive responses are so predictable.
One is in a flower vase, the other in a decorative glass bowl-- just watertight containers of adequate size that were clean and had wide enough mouths.
I failed to take into account that usually, when they sit by each other, their tanks are on different levels, so they can't see one another very well.
Just now, Alexander, the big aggressive blue one, noticed Gibson, the little recovering-agoraphobe, in the bowl next to him. The bowl has a pattern painted on it; I hadn't considered he'd be able to distinguish little Gibson through all that. But he did, all right. I looked over and Alexander was as flared as a fish can get, all his fins out and his gill covers puffed up.
Gibson, meanwhile, instead of exhibiting the textbook response (flare right back)-- was freaking out and attempting to jump out of his bowl. Because, being a fish, he thought it preferable to be on a dry table rather than two sheets of glass away from another fish. (This is why I keep his normal tank covered at all times. He is not, as the kids say, the sharpest bulb on the block.)
I immediately separated them and have put up a barrier of objects between them so neither one can see the other anymore. It's generally considered healthy, in keeping betta fish (as they're also known), to let them see each other or a mirror once in a while, so they can get themselves all worked up and excited and feel proud of themselves when they don't get beat up. Alone and unstimulated, they sometimes get depressed and die of ennui. Hell, I would too without a good argument once in a while. Especially if my species didn't really do any other kind of social contact. (They don't even get to have sex.)
Still, I feel guilty.
Because I laughed at Gibson.
Poor little bastard. It's not his fault that he doesn't do what his brain is hard-wired to do and what every other single specimen of his species and sex would have done in the same circumstance. He's my little freakazoid and I love him anyway.
... But I love him in that sort of academic way that it's necessary to love animals whose lifespans average under two years even with proper care and feeding. Poor, poor little bastard.
I'm not a bad person, really. I swear.
I set the two fish beside each other on the coffee table, where my computer is.
They are, by the way, Siamese Fighting Fish. Highly aggressive, and behavioral scientists love playing with them because their aggressive responses are so predictable.
One is in a flower vase, the other in a decorative glass bowl-- just watertight containers of adequate size that were clean and had wide enough mouths.
I failed to take into account that usually, when they sit by each other, their tanks are on different levels, so they can't see one another very well.
Just now, Alexander, the big aggressive blue one, noticed Gibson, the little recovering-agoraphobe, in the bowl next to him. The bowl has a pattern painted on it; I hadn't considered he'd be able to distinguish little Gibson through all that. But he did, all right. I looked over and Alexander was as flared as a fish can get, all his fins out and his gill covers puffed up.
Gibson, meanwhile, instead of exhibiting the textbook response (flare right back)-- was freaking out and attempting to jump out of his bowl. Because, being a fish, he thought it preferable to be on a dry table rather than two sheets of glass away from another fish. (This is why I keep his normal tank covered at all times. He is not, as the kids say, the sharpest bulb on the block.)
I immediately separated them and have put up a barrier of objects between them so neither one can see the other anymore. It's generally considered healthy, in keeping betta fish (as they're also known), to let them see each other or a mirror once in a while, so they can get themselves all worked up and excited and feel proud of themselves when they don't get beat up. Alone and unstimulated, they sometimes get depressed and die of ennui. Hell, I would too without a good argument once in a while. Especially if my species didn't really do any other kind of social contact. (They don't even get to have sex.)
Still, I feel guilty.
Because I laughed at Gibson.
Poor little bastard. It's not his fault that he doesn't do what his brain is hard-wired to do and what every other single specimen of his species and sex would have done in the same circumstance. He's my little freakazoid and I love him anyway.
... But I love him in that sort of academic way that it's necessary to love animals whose lifespans average under two years even with proper care and feeding. Poor, poor little bastard.
I'm not a bad person, really. I swear.
