As many know, I haved named my betta fish Sammy, which is short for Samurai. He’s a fighting fish after all. A week ago, Sammy attempted to kill himself.
I was cleaning out his bowl as I usually do every week. I take him out with a green net and put him into another bowl in the meantime. This time, on transit to the temporary shelter, he jumped out of the green net! The next thing I knew, he was flopping on the counter gasping for…err…water? I dunno, anyhoo, so yea, there he was. I was shocked into paralysis, stunned, and not knowing what to do. I chased him on the counter with the green net.
I suppose I could have picked him up with my hands but I was afraid I would hurt him in the process. Yea, so I chased him with the net hoping he would flop back into it. Riiiiight. The very killer net he had jumped from would be his salvation? Sammy was no dumb fish. He flopped away as fast as his body could take him. To my horror, he fell off the counter onto the floor. "Oh my god, oh my god," I kept saying as if divine intervention would scoop him off the floor and put him back into the watery safety his bowl. Suddenly, I wondered how long a fish could survive without water so, in an act defying all rationale, I poured water on him. While he was on the floor. Yea. No comment.
Finally, some logical part of my brain started working and I grabbed a paper towel and scooted him into the net, I dropped him into the water and watched as he started swimming. I sat down, began to breathe again, and I sighed in relief. Suddenly, I was angry at Sammy. He scared me to death! I felt like taking him by the fins and yelling, "What were you thinking?? You could have died! I raised you better than that." But I didn’t, obviously. However, I didn’t speak to him for two days and gave him the silent treatment even when I fed him.
I told everyone he attempted suicide but, after thinking about it, I’m sure that he just wanted to escape bondage. What kind of life is that for him in that bowl? He’ll never get to mate or have kids. He’ll never get to explore the warm waters of the Pacific. Poor Sammy. For him death was better than captivity. I don’t know if I want another fish after Sammy. Animals don’t belong in cages or bowls. I simply perpetuated that though when I got him from Walmart. And I thought I was saving him from the inevitable death that awaited him on a Walmart shelf when, in actuality, I was simply moving him from one hell to another. And this hell kept him alive by feeding him. Sheesh, depressing!
We watched the movie The Truman Show when we were in Laredo during the Rita evacuation. Sammy is like Truman, I thought. Truman’s whole life was a TV show that he didn’t know about. He was an orphan, who was adopted by a corporation, and was raised on the set. Eventually Truman realizes something is up when things are predictable and certain events don’t make sense. So he tries to leave his island to find the world that has so often eluded him. He defies death to escape and discovers his Creator (in this case, the tv show creator). Isn’t that we all should do: break away from the things we do just because we’ve always been told that’s the way the world is and should be? Shouldn’t we seek a higher plane of Truth that we can’t even name but have a gut feeling that it exists? Isn’t that was Sammy was trying to do: free himself from the lies of his life and from the idea that this, his bowl, was all that there was.
OR, he could have simply trying to free himself from the evil green net of death. And, you know what? I shouldn’t blame him either way. He’s a fighter; true to his name. I just wish he knew that I simply was trying to help. You should die fighting, Sammy-Braveheart, not from a bacterial infection caused by your dirty water. Stink-EEEE!
