Giving away his pet

Most kids would have dogs, tortoises, fishes or even cats for pets.  But my son, William, he has a rather unique one, however I can't say it's exotic.

Here's a little history

Some of you may know that we rear fishes in the houses.  We started humbly with this then upgraded to this, which was a beautiful aquarium bought for me by my husband when he was courting me.

And here is an old post when one of Vic's fish, fondly named Skinny swam to fish heaven.

When the old aquarium motor started to break down, we decided to buy a whole new aquarium instead of fixing the motor (as with these days, it's not worth repairing if a brand new model costs only a little more).

We had for a good time, 8 or 9 beautiful gold fishes that survived until one started to die, and we added a new one, and then the rest of the community started to go belly up on us one by one.  That's when we decided to go for different breeds of fishes (because the kids loved choosing different fishes from the pet shop).  Sometimes we find one or two fishes mysteriously disappeared and then discovering only skeleton bones in a corner.  Yes, fish can carnivorous too! 

And now...

Slowly, we decided to just focus on guppies, supposedly more hardly and breeds fast.  I was rather ambitious, thinking we can save some ringgits by breeding our very own guppies. 

Picture downloaded from the internet

Breed we did, but it was not easy as sometimes there'd be miscarriages, or if we were too late to separate the would-be mother, the baby fries were eaten by the other fishes. 

The guy in black

With the guppies, came a scavenger for the aquarium.  We had a couple of scavengers that died during its tenure of service with us, and one that mischievously ate up the other fishes and ended up back at the fish shop thereafter!  From the beginning, William has claimed that the scavenger is his pet, not the fishes.  He would proudly carry the bag of scavenger home when we buy one.  We found it cute, because he was only 3-4yo then. 

Now that William's 4.5yo, and hardly speaks about his scavenger anymore, I thought it'd be easy to give away the fishes (and scavenger, of course) and put away the aquarium altogether.  This is because the new sofa is longer than the old, and therefore we had to move the side table that holds the aquarium to another part of the living room - temporarily. 

Like giving away something closed to us, we wanted to find the fishes a good home, preferably with kids and good owners who will give them clean water and some decorations to swim in / with.  We had a few offers, and finally decided to pass to a good friend.

I remembered having told William previously that the fishes will have to go now that the new sofa is in.  We can't keep them there forever because that corner is not really a place for an aquarium, moreover the Christmas tree will have to come up soon. 

Last night, when we finally put our intention to action, William was fine when we transferred the fishes to a container, until it came to the scavenger.  HIS scavenger.  

We did not expect him to be this emotional.  And I got emotional too.  Because I so wanted to clear that corner, and here my son... my 4.5yo son was being overly sentimental (oopss, sound like me?) over a scavenger.  We toyed over various options including giving away just the fishes, and keeping the scavenger alone in another container outside the house (but that literally meant a slow death for him as there will be no waste for him to eat).

For the first time in his life, he really protested against my decision.  Vic was fine giving away the pets and just sat watching the two of us.  Hubby decided to let the two of us work things out.

After a good 10 minutes of tears (from him, NOT me) in protest of giving away his pet, I gave in. 

Sigh.  Sacrifices of a mother. 

I sulked for a bit until hubby successfully put a smile back on my face.  : )  But the aquarium is still going ok...