Monday, April 14, 2008

Close call

Whoa. We almost just had to have our first conversation with a 2 year old about death. Our fish, Nemo, (yes, I know he looks nothing like Nemo) was milimeters from being down the kitchen drain. His poor little bowl gets very dirty because we are lazy pet keepers--which is precisely why we have a FISH, which is as low-maintenance as you can get. So, I decided that it was time to give Nemo a fresh bowl. I've done this a handful of times. My method is: I pour the bowl into the sink, until Nemo is close, then I pour Nemo and some water into a glass to wait for his bowl to be cleaned, then I pour him back into the clean bowl. Well, Nemo snuck up on me this time and he went into the sink with some of the dirty water. I seriously. Panicked. He was flopping around in/on the little rubber flaps of the drain that lead to the--ew--garbage disposal. His body was honest-to-goodness halfway down. Carson was right behind me, and I didn't want him to know what was happening. I kept thinking: this is it! He's going to die in my kitchen drain and sooner or later I'll have to turn on the garbage disposal and I'll KNOW what is happening! Against my natural instincts, I tried to grab this slimy thing and at least succeeded in getting him out of the dangerous clutches of the disposal. Now he was flopping on the white porcelain, begging for life. He slipped out of my fingers three separate times, and I even thought of trying to quickly fill the sink with water to save him, but there was NO TIME, PEOPLE! I finally got a hold of him and threw him into the empty glass and added water quickly. Fyoosh. First pet death avoided. Toddler child spared of devastating loss.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was so worried he (Nemo) was going to die while you were in Disneyland. The responsiblity was almost too much. I could just hear Carson refering to me as "the aunt who killed Nemo" :-) Nice save Mom.
-Michelle

butters said...

I love this picture of Carson, so cute of a boy you have. I'm glad that you only have fish for pets(: and that Nemo survived this whole ordeal. I think I would have issues with touching a slimey fish too.

I'm glad to hear you might be up on Thurs. I'll try and call you before then. I'm excited to see you guys,
Jenna

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh...guess what...? This happened to me too!!!! Sadly, our "blue fish" (yep, we had two, red fish and blue fish) didn't teeter on the edge of the gross black rubber ring...he just slid right down in there! EWWWW is right! He landed in the disposal among the leftover mac-n-chesse from lunch. I panicked too! I called Bryce at work...and his solutions was "Get it over with hon!" So, I flipped the switch. It was the WORST! Isaac still remembers :( So, yes, fish are very low maintenance pets, BUT I have never worried about my Golden Retriever slipping into the garbage disposal! FYOOSH is right, good save Jen!

Becky said...

May I suggest my dad's fish water changing technique... he would put an old strainer in the sink first fill the sink with water then put the fish in the colander. (We had an old yellow tupperware colander that was for fish use only.) This avoids any potential drain accidents. Using my dad's technique, we had the SAME goldfish that I won at a carnival for 8 years!

Aj Schwanz said...

Okay, first, it's not nice to have a post titled "close call" when you're pregnant: makes an overly-imaginative mama blog reader panic a little bit. :)

Second: nice save! While Becky's dad was really onto something (dude: 8 years?!! Are you sure there wasn't any 'switching out' of the fish? . . . ), I always just dumped all the water into a plugged sink, cleaned, filled the water back up, and used a fish-catcher-net thing to put him back in the water. Bleck: there's nothing fun about touching floppy fish.

And then all I could think about yesterday was Rudy and Lamar on the Cosby show - classic episode.