Life of a Beta

Soon we will be celebrating a remarkable milestone in our family.  Will, my youngest daughter's pet fish, will have survived a whole year in our house.  Big deal, right?  Well, I am sure that Will is thrilled not to have been flushed down the toilet during the past 12 months.  But of even greater significance is that we have kept a fish alive for more than three weeks.  If PETA has a watch list for pet fish killers, we are at or near the top.  For some reason we are the kiss of death to fish.  Come home with us and your days are numbered.  And often you don't need two hands to count them out.  I think fish at the pet store practice floating belly-up just in case we happen to wander in looking for Goldie XXIV.  We are not evil people, really.  It is just that whatever genetic trait is required to keep small fish alive is missing from our DNA. 
That is until Will came along.  For her 6th birthday my daughter wanted a fish.  She made this clear to us in August, September, a half dozen times in October, and daily throughout the month of November.  Each time she brought the subject up I had a queasy feeling inside.  She had no idea what she was asking for, no clue of her family history of fishslaughter, no inkling that this birthday present would be gone before we had blown out the candles on her cake.  At first my wife and I employed that classic parenting technique of condivoidence - avoiding the subject by condescendingly dismissing the request as a cute childhood fantasy (most people save this for big ticket items like ponies, but given our track record with fish it seemed appropriate).  When that failed we moved on to redirection (how about a Zhu Zhu pet instead.  Like a mechanical hamster was really going to be as good as a dead fish).  Finally we embarked on to the responsibility guilt trip (having a pet is a lot of work...are you sure you can be the fish's Mommy?...you can't keep your room clean how can you take care of a living creature...and other lame one-liners).  We just did not have the heart to tell her the truth about our past misadventures with fish.
So we caved and got her the cheapest fish we could find - a Beta.  While male Beta's are pretty to look at, our real intention was to spend as little as possible because we knew where this was going.  Much to our surprise our daughter actually fed the fish, read to him, talked to him, drew pictures for him for days, weeks, and months on end.  And so Will continues to be part of our family.
What does it say about our clan that only a Beta can survive in our midst?  In case you are not up on your pet fish, Beta's are capable of living in fresh, cold water.  They don't need much space and their food is pretty cheap.  Female Beta's are not that colorful, but the males, in order to attract the attention of the females, are pretty vibrant.  They come in wonderful shades of purple and blue and red and green.  There is a catch to the Beta.  They don't like each other, especially males.  You cannot have two males in the same tank or there will be bloodshed.  And they really don't like females around that much either ( I will spare you the gory details about what they do to their offspring).  Given their general hostility towards other Beta's it is a wonder the species has survived.  Loving marriages and stable home environments are not part of the Beta world.
Will is hard-core Beta.  He spends a good chunk of his day attacking his reflection in the glass (welcome to our family, you will fit right in).  He seems to need his personal space.  Loneliness is not an issue for Will, nor is boredom.  He appears very content to swim around his little tank, eat his food, and get all Rambo on those other Beta's that he keeps seeing just outside his tank.  And most importantly, his lifestyle has enabled him to survived a year in the house of lost fish souls.
Our relationship with Will does not make a lot of sense to me.  Sure, he benefits from having a safe place to live and someone to feed him on a regular basis.  In exchange, we...well...I don't know what we really get out of it.  After a year the excitement has worn off and he does not do any tricks I am aware of, other than smacking his head on the tank as he fights off his reflection.  As far as pets go he is pretty boring, but low maintenance. 
I think what Will brings to the table (it's okay, PETA, we don't plan to eat him) is his ability to provide my daughter with an opportunity to care for something besides herself.  There is a desire in most humans to nurture, to tend to life.  This impulse may find its root in the command that God gave Adam and Eve to care for all of creation.  For those of us who don't live on a farm pets are a way to connect with the animal world and live out our calling as stewards of God's wonderful creation. 
Perhaps this is why I always feel so bad when a fish dies in our care.  Until Will, the guppies and other assorted fish were never with us long enough to really form any sort of emotional attachment, but it felt as if we had failed to do our job.  We were not being good care givers.  So, I guess I am glad that our daughter pestered us into having another fish for a pet.  Will has given us a chance to redeem ourselves, to believe again that we can sustain life.  Even if it is just in the form of a tiny, solitary fish that is in desperate need of some anger management counseling.