A tale of two fishes

So, my brother bought Ryan a fish tank for his birthday two weeks ago. We are now the proud owners of an orange and white fish (who Ben named Snowman) and a solid orange fish (who Ryan named Snowy.)

Well, the inevitable happened - this morning we woke up to a dead fish. The orange one. YUCK. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate dealing with dead animals? Especially fish. Double YUCK! Anyways, I had to break the news to Ryan this morning. He cried for about 10 seconds (maybe not even that long) and then He asked why his fish died - i explained that his fish got sick and that these things just happen and now he lives in heaven with Jesus. He just said "oh, okay".

So this morning at 8:25 a.m. (way too early) we had to go to Walmart and buy a new fish. This time he wanted a black one. He enjoyed picking out the fish so much, that he told me, mommy when this new fish dies, i want that big one next time. Go figure. Anyways, he picked this black fish out all by himself, paid for it himself with his birthday money out of his birthday wallet, and took it home.

He named this new fish Diego, after the sabertooth tiger in the movie ice age. Anyway,so when we got home, we still had the yucky job of digging out the dead fish who was now caught in the fish filter (double yuck!) and give him a proper burial. Me, the naive mom that i can be, thought this would be hard on the boys...so i tried to soften the blow. Much to my surprise, my boys were tickled pink to flush this poor victim down the toilet. They enjoyed it so much, i now have visions of them digging their perfectly healthy fish out of the tank, just to flush them too.

So now my boys anxiously await the death of yet another poor unsuspecting fish so they can flush him down the toilet and go to Walmart and pick out a new one.