Aquaria

When I was little we lived two blocks from Nana and Bumpa. They sat in the living room chain smoking and watching Lawrence Welk. Nana kept an aquarium full of guppies. Guppies breed exponentially, so we brought some home for an aquarium in the sunroom. My brother fed them. The guppies got a disease that grew like white moss on their flesh. We added medicine that turned the water blue, but they all died anyway.

After my brothers left for university and we moved to Poplar Bluff, I had an aquarium of my own, first with guppies, then mollies, platies, swordtails, and dwarf gouramis. The aquarium eventually became a terrarium. Fish gave way to other creatures: red-spotted newts, then hermit crabs, and finally an armadillo lizard named Genghis.

Nana and Bumpa used to come look after the house while we were away. Every time, Bumpa would commit some atrocity on the garden, cutting down Mom's forsythia, tearing clematis off the side deck, or spraying pesticide around the house to kill spiders. Genghis died after eating poisoned crickets.

Later in life I had a saltwater aquarium. Reef fish seem to have more personality, perhaps because they live in a diverse environment.