It isn’t long ago since our goldfish Fyodor died and the night before Sunday 29th of March, our second gold fish Babette died suddenly. Rest in peace.
She was one of two gold fish in our first batch of living pets (we have a few dead pets lying around, such as Lady C’s pet plants), and even though we couldn’t establish any certainty as to their sexes we simply adopted one each and called them Fyodor and Babette. Fyodor died in pain, I am sad to say, as his swim bladder burst without any warning. This is a very painful and slow way to die, and fish can live for months in that condition. Luckily he didn’t. Babette however, simply died swimming one night. She was in good health, had great appetite and swam around with her new friend Tiedemand who took Fyodor’s place on Thursday the 12th of March, and the next day we found her dead. We don’t suspect any foul play between the two, and it may seem that Babette had just reached her age.
Babette was always the smart one. When Fyodor did his Jaws routine or stuck on the side of the tank watching us Babette would be silently grabbing the food in the background. No show, no big deal, just another win. Like the Predator, or Skynet, she’d watch and learn silently waiting for even the smallest mistake. She was also a great explorer, the first of the two to swim through the hole in our fake tree root, and she liked swimming a lot more than Fyodor did. She would really enjoy herself swimming against the water flow and play in the stream when we re-filled the tank. You will be sorely missed, little girl.
Tiedemand is a different breed than the two above, though the same species. He has a slender, graceful body with fancy tails and is a very good swimmer. He seems more fit for life than Fyodor and Babette ever did, although Babette adopted Lady C’s superior intelligence and Fyodor saw himself as a man eating shark. Tiedemand has a nick name too — Solkongen — or the Sun King (Le Roi Soleil) because of his extravagant manners. Just like the Sun King it seems he has some bad nerves.
Eventually we’ll get a bigger fish tank, but before that we need more space.