A fish with an attitude

My son has a goldfish and if you’ve read previous blogs here you know that I went from totally disliking this little fish to actually doing some training with her. She is trained to push a little fish-sized basketball into a hoop. Ok, I know what you’re thinking…. Actually you could be thinking a couple of things: first, you could be thinking I’m crazy or second, that I’m a liar. I can only promise that I’m not lying. If you think training a goldfish is absurd (I actually can’t argue with you there) you can see lots of videos on YouTube. In fact, a friend of mine gave me a goldfish training kit for Christmas. So there you have it… I am a closet goldfish trainer.

My goldfish training ability (or inability) isn’t even the real subject of the blog. What I wanted to write about was that Jack’s goldfish has developed an attitude. I don’t know whether goldfish can even have attitudes but based on this fish’s behavior lately I’d have to say yes.

Goldie the goldfish (my son isn’t original when it comes to names) has gotten so used to my daily schedule of working with her. The problem is that about a week ago I ended up working on an article deadline and didn’t have time to do our regular training session. I was sitting in my office when I heard a loud tapping sound. I was alone in the house. I got up to investigate and discovered the noise was coming from Jack’s room. I peeked inside the door and found the source of the noise. Goldie was spitting gravel up at the side of the tank. Was she bored? Is this normal fish behavior? Was it playtime? Was she just searching for food? Or, was she trying to get my attention to remind me that I was falling down on the job? Based on the fact that she has routinely engaged in this behavior whenever I miss a day of training, I tend to think the fish is not happy with me.

Tomorrow I will be right on time for our session.

Clearly, I need a life.

 

If you’d like to read more from the Two Loons, check out our book Cookies for Dinner.

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