The Landlubber's Guide to Aquatics--Part 2

However sad we were about losing a member of our little aquatic society, we could not really deny the fact that the entertainment value of our fishtank would have put any major broadcasting company to shame (even BEFORE the writer's strike). we are currently hammering out a deal with paramount to make a Television mini series out of the whole thing. Many a night we would all be gathered in the living room, television talking and laughing idly to itself, while all of our attentions were fixed on the little underwater drama that we had created. It was similar in many ways to that television show, “The Real World” except that since nobody involved had lips, or lungs for that matter, we didn’t have to bleep out any swearwords.

In the midst of our great murder mystery , a great romance was also beginning to unfold itself... right in our little world.

The two crabs were named Xena-the warrior crab, and Hercules. Xena's name came about due to her aggressive and volatile personality, but Hercules’s was simply because of his rather peculiar habit of standing completely rigid on top of one of the plastic rock formations and flexing his big claw, much like an iron man flexing his muscles. He was essentially saying to the tank, and more specifically to the love of his life, Xena, “Well, here it is ladies, the claw you’ve only ever seen in your dreams…heh... no need to faint, just form an orderly line and I’ll show you how I can cut these fish flakes in half…” Poor Hercules! Xena really could have cared less about him and his muscular claw. despite his strong attempts at romance, she just continued to pace the walls of the tank like a little crab carousel, ocasionally pausing to roll her eyestalks at his catcalls and whistles. To her, and unfortunately to anyone else who happened to wander past the tank, Hercules did not appear to be the complete and utter babe that he imagined himself to be, and indeed, he actually looked more like a possessed or degenerate wal-mart greeter, whose erratically waving claw seemed more painful than attractive.

One evening about a week after we had plopped everybody into the new tank, while our whole family was sitting at the dinner table doing something, (I don’t recall exactly what, but we were all being fairly quiet. ) Then all at once we heard a very strange noise, like someone quietly typing on a keyboard using only the tips of their fingernails. We all looked up from whatever it was that we were doing, and looked around. And there, much to our surprise, was Xena Scuttling rather hurriedly through the dining room towards the front door. Naturally we all leapt to our feet with the intention of scooping her up and tossing her back into the tank...until we realized that she had pincers. So we stood back in shock and watched her scuttle, while Greg, the real animal man in our family, rushed into the closet to find a fishnet. Once she was safely back in the tank, I personally seran wrapped the entire tank to make sure that however she managed to escape, it would not happen again. Hercules was glad to have her back, and flexed excitedly as soon as she hit the water….Xena just rolled her eyestalks and resumed pacing. It was then that it became clear to us that her strange habit of pacing the walls of the tank were her attempt at finding a weakness in her prison.

But only a few days later however, during feeding time, (which had gotten to the point that you almost needed a wetsuit to do the job properly) we noticed that Xena was gone...agian. closer inspection reviled that the Seran wrap cover had been breached....scissored through. We could almost hear her little crabby voice shouting, “FREEDOM!!”, as she scuttled away. Nevertheless, it was all hands on deck as we frantically searched the entire house for the crab, who I'm fairly certain is now crossing the Florida state line. needless to say we did not find her. It was a sad day at our house not just for Hercules, who flexed his claw lethargically, but also for my mother, who, in her head, imagined the Sunday afternoon when she invited the pastor and his wife over for dinner and inevitably Xena would be found...scuttling across the kitchen floor.

As the days went by, Hercules became more and more restless, pacing the walls in much the same way that Xena had, until one day he decided that it was time... he HAD to find Xena. So he climbed the stalk of the filter up to the top of tank, but rather then scissoring his way through the seran wrap as Xena had done, he continued to follow the filter tubing up inside of the filter.... which is where I found him about two weeks later. It could not have happened to a nicer crab, but as Xena apparently already knew, nice isn’t everything. Brains are kind of important too. So from then on the pair became known as Romeo, and Xena.

Now, back to the murder mystery:

A few days after the death of Romeo, I happened into the living room just in time to catch the larger of the two frogs gulp our plicasamus (a fish whose sole purpose in the tank is to suck algea off the walls of the tank so it doesn't turn green) into his mouth. This was not a wise move, as plicasamus have a notoriously hard exoskeleton which protects them from from all manner of aggressive fish( which is why you see them in all kinds of fishtanks, even really mean fish have a hard time eating one!) not to mention the fact that the plicasamus was twice as long as the frog, so his tail stuck out a good two inches from the frog’s mouth. having just witness a terrible crime, I ran over to the tank and reached my bare hand in (something I would NOT have done if either Xena OR Romeo had been around) and grabbed the frog and flopped him squirming on his back on the coffee table. One pull on the plicasamus’s wildly flapping tail told me that I couldn’t just tug him out... seeing as the frog was pretty determined to keep his lunch. So I held down his arms with my thumb and pointer finger and used my other thumb to thrust on his little stomach. one good push sent the fish flopping onto the table. I scooped the pair of them up and threw the plicasamus back into the tank on my way to the kitchen to get a mason jar. I filled it up with water and tossed the frog into it, and for good measure, fished out the other frog and threw him in too. they were in froggy prison now...murder is a serious crime in our waters. It was a good thing we had the old tank still, because otherwise I think they probably would have stayed in that jar.

For awhile we set up the frog tank in the bathroom. but unfortunately it is slightly unnerving to have four lidless eyes staring at you while you are trying use the toilet. So we eventually found two little boys to take them, and chalked the whole ordeal up to experience. to those little boys, the fact that they were frogs was only slightly less cool then the fact that they were convicted felon frogs....one a murderer, and the other an accomplice. it was a good arrangement for everybody...especially the plicasamus who has outlived nearly every member of the fishtank society.

There are many more stories that came out of our fishkeeping days. the message I guess I'm trying to get out to everybody is that fishkeeping can be fun, but you need at LEAST degree in marine biology and an aquatic Heimlich certificate before you can adopt...