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In Memory Of Bonito the Betta Fish
In memory of Bonito the Betta Fish...
Bonito died last night.
Bonito was a betta fish that lived in a small aquarium on my computer desk.
I wasn't too happy when my wife brought Bonito home nearly two years ago. She had already managed to kill every houseplant that wasn't a cactus, so how is she going to take care of a fish?
It turned out that she didn't.
But Bonito and I formed a bond.
When I stuck my finger up against the tank or the surface of the water, he would zoom up to me. When I fed him food that he didn't like, he'd spit the food back out at me.
I ended up feeding Bonito full time and changing his water. I put Bonito on my computer desk right next to my monitor.
I think that Bonito liked my computer. When I surfed the Internet, he would zoom up to the side of the tank closest to the monitor and flare excitedly. My wife told me that it was because the light from the monitor as seen from his relatively dark Aquarium made a reflection that had Bonito thinking that there was another fish near by. I think it was because he was reading.
Besides, if she was such an expert, why wasn't she cleaning the tank and feeding the fish?
When I played MP3s, my wife would tell me that I should turn it down because the vibrations were likely bothering Bonito. But of course, Bonito was actually dancing around the tank as I played the music. It didn't seem to bother him at all.
One thing that I know Bonito didn't like was when I would play Quake or Unreal.
As I'd pound on the keyboard and mouse, poor little Bonito would bounce around inside his tank. You could tell that Bonito was not at all happy about the graphic depictions of sex and/or violence and crude language.
I would try to keep the games short as to not upset Bonito too much.
Towards the end, Bonito wasn't looking too healthy. I think he had gone blind. He wouldn't see me, the computer monitor and he barely responded to music. One day he didn't eat at all, and that night he had died.
In the morning, my wife had left too early to notice that Bonito had passed away. I woke up and sat at my computer, and saw the silent fish at the bottom of the tank.
At first, I genuinely panicked. It was, after all, the fish that my wife had brought home, so technically it's her fish. Was it my fault that Bonito died? I scrambled...
First, I thought about pulling Bonito out of his tank and throwing him out into the street. He would sooner or later become road kill and I could tell my wife that he must have escaped.
No...Wait...Never mind.
I then decided that I would pull Bonito out of the tank and feed him to a cat. I could tell my wife that the cat must have gotten into the fish tank and eaten Bonito.
Then again, both cats could've cared less about Bonito in nearly two years. Why would they all of the sudden eat him now?
I decided to just suck it up and just flat out tell her, "Honey, the fish died", and see where it goes from there.
I decided to concentrate on the now morbid task of cleaning out the tank, one last time. I dumped out half of the water and pulled out all of the rocks.
I was just about ready to dump the remainder of water with Bonito's body in it into the canal in the back yard. This way he could float out into the bay and be dead the way nature meant him to be.
I stepped onto the back porch just to find that it had been raining for quite some time and there were no signs of the weather letting up before I had to leave for work.
I went back inside with the tank and proceeded to the bathroom where I flushed Bonito down the toilet.
Screw it. It's just a fish.
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