Bye Bye Bluey

All things must die. It is an inevitability.

We have many pets, all of which will eventually expire.

We have a cat that is about 14 years old. He coughs, sputters, pukes, but mostly sleeps on hot air registers. He makes me sneeze.

And we have a bunny, 12 years old, who shits (a lot) who stinks, and does pretty well nothing. He was adopted from the daycare because Zach insisted he was 'being ignored'.

And then there is Bluey, or rather there ‘was’ Bluey.

Bluey was our Tropical Fighting Fish, who will not live to fight another day. He was approx 2 and half years old. If Bluey was a human, he would be the equivalent of the 112 year old nursing home resident that the Channel 6 News camera crew visit every year. They simply cant believe he is still pounding back the Geritol.

Yes, Bluey had some serious staying power.

Our good friend Glain could never figure out how our dang fish has lasted so long. Glain is on a first name basis w the disheveled dude at Pet-Smart who works the tropical fish isle. He as been instructed to have a fighting fish on standby, to replace the hapless inhabitants of her daughters fishbowl. All ‘descendants’ of the original fish, having unsuccessfully run the porcelain luge event.

So Bluey was looking pretty grim last week. Maddy was sure he was dead, as he lay motionless on the bottom of the big glass bowl. If ya got up real close though, you could see one fin wiggling, the other dormant. He also had some weird spinal curvature issue that had him bent like the letter S. If there ever was a solid case for fish euthanasia, this was it.

I braced little Zachary for the inevitable this morning, pointing out Bluey’s grim prognosis. He seemed to take it pretty well. Shockingly pragmatic actually.

“well, we’ll just bury him next to Mousey!”

Mousey was the unfortunate rodent that got beat-on by the neighbors cat. (our cat was likely too busy puking, to chase mice). Mousy was unceremoniously dumped like a mob-hit, in the grass on the side of our house. Zach wanted a proper send-off, so he was buried in our garden... “Mousey – RIP” scrawled in black magic marker on a scrap piece of cedar, carved into the familiar shape of a tombstone.

I am stating for the record that this began as a mission of mercy, that went horribly wrong.

We often head out for a weekend, and ask friends or neighbours to check in on the pets. I really didn’t want a panic call on my cellphone, telling me the 95 cent pet had expired. Better that this all go down in a controlled environment.

As soon as Zach was off to school, I went back home to take a conference call and get busy.

While I had the speaker phone on high, I scooped out the fish – who protested not one bit – and placed him in a small container, which I then put in the freezer. My plan was to tell Zach that Bluey had stopped twitching his little fin, so I froze him after he went to sleep. so we could bury him in the spring, right next to the decomposed mouse, just as he suggested.

The conference-call came and went, and one e-mail (with an astonishing 47 cc-addresses attached) led to another useless spreadsheet, and soon it was well after lunch.

As I tried to prepare a quick bite before the next scheduled call, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I had willfully flash-frozen our sons pet.

I opened up the freezer, and pulled out the container. Bluey was precisely as I left him, but he was now entombed in a solid block of ice. I was initially struck by the efficiency of our freezer.

And then I started to feel, well, very very awful.

A flood of unfamiliar, and quite frankly unsettling emotions started crowding into my head…did he suffer? Did he thrash? The light was out when I closed the door – was that unnerving?

Then I started to laugh at the ridiculous predicament I had boxed my psyche into. Nonsense. The cerebral cortex of a fish is the size of a grain of sand, surely he didn’t feel a thing, it was probably like going to sleep, and surely he was better off than the S-shaped spina bifida pet that waved one sad little fin in the bowl on our kitchen counter… day in, day out.

Right?

RIGHT?!!?

Holy fuck, I started to feel real bad. The irrational nature of my thought processes was making think I might be losing my mind.

And then the phone rang, and like a an A-D-D ridden fool, I was again swept back into a sea of mindless work-related minutia.

Zachary came home after school, and Maddy was first to spot that our family numbers had dropped by one.

“Mudd, where’s Bluey?”

Which on any other day would have been a funnier question, for the last time she asked that question, about a year or so ago, Bluey had in fact attempted to kill himself. He joined the ranks of Suicide Chumps though, for we eventually rescued him from the Formica, and threw him back into his bowl.

So I explained to everyone that Bluey had performed his last S-shaped side-stroke, and that - as per Zachary’s wishes (sorta) – Bluey was now frozen, waiting for spring to join Mousey. I am sure Zach saw my eye twitching, as I told him the pet-equivalent of the ‘granny went to sleep forever’ speech. Except that I put the pillow on granny’s face as she snoozed.

Zach held up ‘Frosty-Bluey’ for a close inspection, and he seemed entirely OK with the whole concept. I gave myself a pat on the back for the imaginative way in which I has introduced my son to the inevitability of death, and even started feeling better about the dubious methods I deployed.

We ate dinner, laughed about our day, and all was well. Then, about forty minutes after the original Popsicle-fish viewing, Zach announced he wanted to go to his bedroom for a while. This is highly unusual, for if I ever left a room Zach was occupying, if I turned around to return, I’d trip over the boy.

He never leaves my side voluntarily.

He got halfway up the stairs and collapsed in a puddle of tears and angst, sobbing about how much he was going to miss Bluey. Maddy and I spent a predictable half hour or so explaining that he didn’t suffer (likely bullshit) that he’s in a better place (more bullshit, he’s dead now so its over for him) and that he was a good pet and lived way longer than was expected (that part was true).

Zach is in the basement with me now, assembling an enormo-Lego toy Maddy bought him when they went out to get his friend a birthday present. Fair enough, I killed his pet, he gets a new toy.

Maddy is going to find out about how Bluey passed, and my conflicted feelings regarding fish-euthanasia, by reading this post. We simply never got a chance to discuss all this either before Bluey was flash-frozen, or after. I am anticipating that she will be mad.

Zachary and I and are listening to Ozzy Osbourne’s second album, Diary of a Madman, and as I get ready to post this weird little story, the words for ‘Tonight” drift across the basement and I cant help but shudder a little at the lyrics….

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I hear the questions

surface in my mind

Of my mistakes that I have made….

Don't want your pity or your sympathy

It isn't going prove a thing to me

Good intentions pave the way to hell…..

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And I just know – as irrational and nutty as it seems – that I will be tormented by aquarium-themed nightmares tonight.

Maybe even tomorrow night too.

And I’m pretty sure I deserve it.