Strawberry Fields for Breakfast

Floating sideways up
Milky eye stares at nothing
Fins flapping no more

I bought nine goldfish a couple of weeks ago- I didn’t mean to get so many, but the fish girl and I got to talking, and we both got distracted. She said, “how many did you want?” and I breezily answered that whatever was in the bag was fine…they went into a 30 gallon holding tank in the basement, and they weren’t fine. They went through that nitrogen cycle that you’re supposed to learn about in junior high science, but my science teachers were ski coaches, and I didn’t really pay attention anyway…. Anyway, all nine died pretty quickly, which is what inspired my haiku.

They went into the holding tank because it is still pretty cold here at night. Also, the purpose of having the fish is to eat mosquito larvae; since there aren’t any of those around yet, I would have to feed them fish food, which I try to avoid.
I have put some duckweed in the pond, and a water lily, which has a couple of leaves. When it warms up more I’ll get some water hyacinth from the nursery, and a papyrus to replace one that died.

Today I got 4 goldfish, put them in the holding tank, and hope that chemistry doesn’t go quite so crazy this time. I thought about putting them in the tank outside, but I think it is still too cold at night for them to do well. I’ll have to check my journal to see when I put fish out last year- I think later in April than this… Writing this down makes me wonder why I bothered to get the fish this early, anyway, just to keep them in a holding tank? That’s a good question.