About a month ago, I was surprised by the response to a post I wrote about my Big Dead Goldfish Dilemma. My extra-large goldfish, Princess, had died very suddenly late last year, and unable to decide what to do with the body, I put her in my kitchen freezer.
I got a range of suggestions from concerned readers in the comments and via social media. They said I could fling Princess into the ocean, cremate her, feed her to a cat, or take her to the woods, cover her body with rocks, pray and burn some sage. I appreciated every response.
But one answer in particular caught my eye. My neighborhood pal Michaelann, who lives just a few blocks away, said I should bury the fish in her garden. I don’t know if Michaelann was serious, but after thinking it over for a few weeks, I messaged her.
Jerome and Michaelann in their front yard farm.
And so, on a warm Saturday afternoon in early March, I wrapped Princess in a towel and strolled up the street, where Michaelann and her partner Jerome were waiting.
With an extensive garden, a beehive and a chicken coop, Jerome and Michaelann are serious about urban farming (check out Michaelann’s blog, Elkins Park Front Yard Farm). I met them last year, when I was working on a magazine story about backyard bee- and chicken-keeping.
When I arrived, there was already a foot-deep hole waiting, cushioned with straw.
Michaelann explained that it was the perfect place for the burial: this spring, the grave will be the site of a Native American-style Three Sisters Garden.
A Three Sisters Garden is a trio of corn, beans and squash all in one hill of soil. The beans add necessary nitrogen to the soil while using the cornstalk as a pole, and the squash’s leaves shade the ground, preventing too many weeds and naturally deterring pests. And apparently, Native Americans of the Atlantic Northeast buried an eel or a fish under each hill, to help fertilize the plants.
I unwrapped Princess and laid her in the hole.
Michaelann covered the orange scales with another handful of straw, to ensure successful composting, and we pushed the dirt back in with our hands.
The grave left a small mound, which we covered with straw and then a weighted screen, to deter digging animals.
I wiped my hands on a towel and we stood around the grave.
“You were a good fish, Princess,” I said.
Jerome asked if we shouldn’t have some kind of song.
We fell silent for a moment, wondering if there were any hymns about fish.
“Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads…” Michaelann murmured at last.
Many of you have been following the story since my goldfish unexpectedly hatched a few hundred fry almost exactly a year ago. Here’s a visual finale of sorts.
I didn’t know it at the time, but on the day our goldfish fry hatched, my husband made a video. I didn’t know he was filming while I was on the phone to a singularly unhelpful aquarium store, whose staffer intimated that he might be willing to give me advice if I came into his store, but wasn’t interested in telling me anything over the phone.
Here, for the first time, are the fry at just a few hours old, while I, a concerned and ignorant fish mother, am antagonized by an unsympathetic world.
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Once I assembled the right equipment, for the first month or so, my main problem was that parents kept spawning. If you ever wondered what goldfish eggs look like, here you go. You can actually see the tiny fish curled up inside. At that point they’re mostly eyeballs and a spine.
At one day old, goldfish fry mostly cling to the side of the tank. They look nothing like fish.
But they quickly left their infancy behind:
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At this point I was reading a bunch of fish care books that said I should “cull” 99% of the fry. So I was pretty stressed out, given my reluctance to kill the babies (the books didn’t say how I should do it) and my simultaneous knowledge that I would NEVER be able to find that many homes for goldfish.
The illusion that the fish were my children was reinforced by products like the net breeder, which was basically an underwater playpen, that my husband and I had to assemble.
I blinked and the fish were one month old.
Probably not the most humane photo opp, I realize now.
In no time at all, it had been two months since they hatched.
Somebody gave me this casserole dish for my wedding and this is how I used it. The fry had to go somewhere while I cleaned the tank.
The fry began to enjoy what I called egg bombs, which was a piece of hard-boiled egg yolk wrapped in cheesecloth and dunked in the tank.
At about three months, the fry discovered the joy of peas, which I carefully shelled and squashed for them.
At this point, summer vacation intervened, and rather than trust anyone else with my babies, I packed their tank and they rode in a bucket with me to the Jersey shore for a week. I should’ve taken some pictures.
I took more pictures when they were about five months old.
In case you're wondering, this is how much fish food I have.
Here is Augustus McCrae, (front) the first fish to have a name, always the biggest of the bunch.
Gus continued to grow.
Gus's companion, Woodrow Call.
Lorena Wood.
Nemo.
Unfortunately (or fortunately for my friends who were already bothered enough with offers of goldfish), Nemo was among many fry who bit the gravel. Like many other batches of animals born by the hundreds, not every goldfish fry that hatches will make it.
At eight months, seven of the largest were ready to go their new home. I put them in a jar for the ride.
My fry meet their new friends in the tank at Abington's Tien Thai Pho restaurant.
Meanwhile, back at home, the remaining survivors, who have gone from the playpen in the big tank to several months in their own two-gallon tank, go back into their parents’ tank.
Yes, someone is always pooping.
Bling (one of two possible fathers) and Augustus.
One month later, my childhood art teacher, still a friend today, adopts six of the fry.
The promises of a few other friends to adopt turn out flakier than fish food, but it’s ok. Goldfish are quite a responsibility, I’ve learned. I’ve had my oldest ones for about eight years and they have moved with me no less than eight times. Cleaning a 40-gallon tank is no picnic, their equipment and materials are expensive, and every time I go out of town I have to set up these irritating battery-powered feeders.
The one-year-old Woodrow Call settles into his new digs. Note that the fish behind him is actually about six years old.
And then, Mom decides that she wants a few – Gus and Call, in particular. So, for her 52nd birthday (and Gus and Call’s first), I bring them in a bucket. By the time Gus and Call arrive at their new tank, they are extremely well-traveled goldfish, having visited four states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
Mom already has four goldfish known as The Wedding Fish. When I got married five years ago, she decided that goldfish would make a charming centerpiece for the tables. Four of them survived the reception and the day after the wedding, I bought a tank for them. They’ve lived at my parents’ house ever since.
A furry big brother.
So there you have it. Seven fry are left. A few are still available for adoption if you’re serious about fish. A year after they hatched, I sometimes still stop to reflect on the bizarre fact that one night last year, I went to bed with three fish and woke up with three hundred.
Here’s a video from this week, featuring both the original culprits and their remaining progeny in some excellent pellet-gulping action.
MVI_3886
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For those who haven’t been in on it from the beginning and want the whole story, visit The Goldfish Fry Saga category and scroll to the bottom for the first post.
I know I should have just been glad that someone wanted seven of my goldfish – a significant percentage of the population. But it was surprisingly hard to choose which ones I would scoop into the jar. How many silver fish, how many golden ones, how many white? Whoever I scooped wouldn’t be coming back.
At home at Tien Thai Pho.
This is what I’d been hoping for ever since I realized, over seven months ago, that my apartment would be full of goldfish, possibly for the rest of my life. I knew my babies would have a good life with their new brothers and sisters in the fish tank at Tien Thai Pho restaurant (an excellent Thai/Vietnamese fusion place in Abington, PA where you can share a huge bowl of pho with the hubby, sans cilantro if you ask). But it was still difficult to dump the fishies in.
A host of worries plagued me for the rest of the evening. What if the other fish chased them? What if the new tank scared them? What if they got sick? What if they didn’t like their new food? What if they didn’t snag enough at feeding time?
Now I know how my mom felt the first time she dropped me off at the dorm.
Augustus McCrae
I decided it was time to move the largest remaining specimens in with the big boys (and girl). They couldn’t stay in the two-gallon tank in the kitchen forever. The tank divider, so useful last spring when I realized that Princess, Werner and Bling had no intention of halting the spawning as long as I left them together, was pressed back into service.
Lorena Wood
This time, I partitioned about 1/6th of the tank on the far left side and poured the biggest little fish right in. A shiny, pearly-charcoal colored pair immediately slipped around the side of the barrier and began exploring, and I gasped in horror as Princess swished toward them. She was big as a whale. The babies dashed back into the pen.
Like a parent who furnishes her basement with a big-screen TV and an Xbox (is that what the kids are playing nowadays?), I added a miniature pirate ship to the pen to make it more inviting, scooping out the gravel underneath to make a perfect hidey-hole, in hopes that the babies would prefer to stay home, rather than swim the wide, dangerous world of the big tank.
Woodrow F. Call
They caught on immediately. Sojourns to the greater tank became common – a few even mingled with their parents from time to time. But home is definitely behind the fence, and they gather comfortably there for most of the day. Werner is the only adult fish who seems to notice that something has changed: he spends long periods peeking uncharacteristically at the left side of the tank, as if he knows something is going on over there, but he can’t quite fathom what.
But two days ago, I happened to glance in and see Augustus and Spot – the largest fry – alone in the pen. I scanned the tank for their companions – where were Lorena, Ron, Woodrow, Mohawk, Tang, Newt and Colonel Brandon? They were all gone. In a rising panic, I opened the filter and shone a flashlight inside. Nothing.
Spot
There was only one answer. The fry had gone on a happy expedition, and their parents had gotten hungry. It was a painful end to all those months of ichthyological nurture. In one more quailing, hopeless effort, I lifted up the plastic Parthenon.
Tang
Like the cool kids hanging out under the bleachers, there they all were. Who knows how they all swam under there or why they preferred the algae-ridden darkness.
And like cheeky adolescents, the same babies who used to dance with excitement when I leaned over the small tank now dash to the opposite side of the barrier whenever I look in on them. If I had followed goldfish-manual protocol, 99% of them would have been “culled”, and now they don’t even want me to look at them. That’s gratitude for you.
Ronald Weasley
P.S. Local readers: some individuals still in need of permanent homes.
The big'uns - some of these still available for adoption.
The smaller fish continue to live in the kitchen tank.
