Frogs and Aquariums

Love me, love my fishies. I, like many others, have fallen to the charm of having an aquarium in my life - although I still draw the line at anything that involves adding salt and/or will die if the power goes out for a few hours (no joke - the lady who runs my daycare purchased a gigantic salt-water aquarium set-up at a garage sale for approximately $50. The prior owners confided they had sunk over $2,000 into fish - and were selling the tank because they were heart-sick that their investment went belly up during a power outage).

I recently upgraded from a little 3-gallon aquarium to the deluxe 12-gallon model, which took much effort, thought, and furniture rearranging to achieve. Did I mention I live in a box? And not just any box . . . a box filled with a surplus of furniture. For those who have never had an aquarium, water is HEAVY . . . and once an aquarium is filled, the chances that you will be able to lift, shove, and/or move it in any other manner are very very slim (at least not without considerable water damage to your furnishings and/or a broken aquarium and dying fishies) - so aquarium location is a serious consideration. Fishies don't like sun. They don't like drastic temperature fluctuations. Most of them don't like to be in busy areas where people are constantly passing by . . . it sets off all the little panicky prey parts of their brain. All in all, fishies are finicky little critters.

I used to wonder what they were thinking. But then the obvious dawned on me. "Food?" Then a moment later: "Food?" And, of course, upon the addition of food to the aquarium, their little brains overload: "Food? . . . Food? . . . Food! Food! Food! Food? . . . "

They call me the beta-whisperer.

And then, we added a frog. One of those cute little aquatic frogs that you see on the day you add it to the aquarium, and then always wonder if it died and got sucked up the air filter. So far, I haven't removed a froggy from the filtration system . . . so I think he's doing just fine . . . although I'm not sure if the other entities sharing the aquarium could be trusted not to eat the body. After all, it goes without saying that all words in fishy-language: Friend, Enemy, Random Plants, Water Specks, etc. can be loosely translated as "food." Eat first. Spit it out if you don't want it. If you don't remember eating it, eat it again. Repeat until it gets lost in the aquarium gravel or someone else eats it.

But I'm wandering off my point. Yes, I actually have a point.

Okay, I don't have a point. But I meant to tell the story about my frog. Namely it's food. Namely that I bought the frog and forgot to ask what it eats. Oops.

So three days later, I wander into Petsmart and ask the lady manning the fishy aquariums what in the heck the little critters eat. I always vaguely assumed they subsisted off the bits of food that managed to fall onto the aquarium gravel . . . but I certainly didn't want to starve the poor thing to death. After I admitted that I had already purchased a frog and had not exactly been feeding it, I endured a rather dubious look from the Petsmart fish expert, who was probably weighing my doubtful intelligence against the chance of bodily harm if she inadvertently offended me. Prudence won out.

"Ummm . . . sometimes they eat flakes," she said (an obvious attempt to agree with me and not let on that she thought my IQ was only slightly higher than the live plants in the aquarium behind her). "But not . . . um . . . not really often. Actually, we sort of recommend . . . well . . . blood worms."

Say, what? Excuse me. I thought she just said blood worms. Ha ha. Oh, look. We're walking toward a freezer. Never noticed that before. Crap. I think she was serious.

This is the horrifying point in my story where I find out that blood-worms come in miniature ice-cube trays that you store in your freezer. They are also helpfully marked "Not for human consumption."

When, in all the long history of my aquarium ownership, did I forget to put down that anything that must be fed any item containing the word "worm" - was on the "do not import on penalty of me yacking quite violently in the toilet" list? I mean, honestly . . . how do you explain it to guests? "Oh, don't mind the blood worms in the freezer. I use them to feed the invisible aquatic frog. The one you never see."

No wonder the little booger is in hiding. Frogs, unlike fish, apparently have a sense of humor about this whole "food" thing.