Bonne Nuit Ma Petit Grande Poisson

“Fish are people too!” I cried with an air of urgent desperation, in an effort to dissuade some expat friends from purchasing goldfish to ‘decorate’ their flat for the few months that they would be in Dubai.

Then the floodgates of ridicule opened.

I took it all on the chin, as I’ve done many times before, but I passed no apologies for my feelings about keeping fish. I have been called crazy, sad, naive, even ‘wanting, because of my fervent belief that a fish can not only be a quality pet, but that they can possess an incredible amount of character and are not the disposable decorative item that most people seem to think they are.

Quite a few years ago I moved out of home and into a garret bedsit in Limerick City. My first job was working as counter staff in the new Bewleys Restaurant on Cruises street.  I was an awkward, introverted little thing back then, with the social graces of a pea. I got lonely, so I went to the pet shop.  To add to my already blatant nerdishness, I was also highly allergic to anything with hair & four legs, so I found myself by the tanks. Hanging out in the back of one, away from the rest of the flock (shoal, whatever!) was a roguish looking fella with a look of madness in his eye. He was about the length of my middle finger (which isn’t very long at all), and shone like freshly rubbed brass.

“Bag him!” I said, and off we toddled to start what would be a long and beautiful friendship.

He lived in a still water bowl in those first years. Not particularly active, he preferred to give me Bela Lugosi eyes from the top of the T.V., occasionally spitting out a stone at the glass. I called him Cider, after my favourite drink.

It was in those first couple of years that I began to believe the whole ‘5 second’ memory thing was tosh. I was a regular viewer of a particular soap opera that had a very distinctive theme tune. Coincidentally, I began feeding him around the same time as that show would come on. Occasionally, I would forget, but as soon as that theme tune started belting out, my usually lethargic friend would get stir crazy, dancing around the tank trying to get my attention.

Sometimes I would deliberately forgo feeding, just to see what would happen. I’d walk around the room, watching him from the corner of my eye. In his confined space, he would follow me with a movement of his head. Just for the craic, I’d walk towards the tank shaking the container of fish food. He’d start going crazy jerking his whole body side to side like a dog wagging its tail, but then I’d stop and walk away again.  He would eventually give up on me, just loll there staring wildly, spitting stones at the glass again.  On some occasions he would simply turn his back and refused to play.

Time passed and I moved to Cork to go to University. I decided to get a tank-mate for my little friend, a Black Moor that I called Othello.

Othello died.

He lost his buoyancy one day and spent the following two weeks doing the back stroke in ever decreasing circles. I became quite distressed by the whole thing. Needless to say my flatmates at the time thought I was a total loop, specially when the matchbox was produced and a little hole dug for him in the garden.

Thankfully, my boyfriend was a tad more sympathetic. He arrived at my house one evening with a gift, for me & Cider. It was a brand new tank, a ‘real’ one, with filter system, plants, new gravel, and a tub of catfish pellets. He had come to the conclusion that the space the fish were in was too small, the water stagnated too quickly, and that feeding from the bottom of the tank rather than the top was healthier for them.

The change in little Cider when he was installed in his new home was incredible. He was like a kid in a sweet shop.  He swam around that tank like a Ferrari on a Formula One track. His favourite occupation was swimming against the current, and round and round the back of the filter. The combined effects of larger space, better food and plenty of exercise, was ‘more’ Cider. He grew and grew, and kept on growing.

I moved house for my third year of Uni, and simultaneously, Cider had to get a larger tank.  We were onto a 1 metre long container by then, and he was now the size of my whole hand. Even though he occasionally tried, he wasn’t able to fit behind the filter anymore.  My housemate and I would take him for walks. We would run up and down the length of the room while he followed. Sometimes we’d stop in the middle, faking moves right or left to try to put him off.  He’d jerk with the fake but was never completely fooled, only ever moving when we committed to our direction.

I had a convert in my flatmate, and through her our Cider Appreciation Society grew.

I nearly killed him that year.

He got a touch of fishy cancer, otherwise unattractively known as ‘Fin Rot’. I managed to get him into remission with a treatment that had to be added to the water once a week. One particular week, when my flatmate was out of the house, I decided to give Cider his medicine while I was completely stoned.


Now, the solution had to be diluted in hot water first.

I don’t think I need to paint a picture. Suffice to say Cider very quickly got a glazed look in his eyes and keeled over. Of course I freaked out little, but thankfully didn’t panic too much. I scooped him out of the big tank with the little one he used to live in, filling it with fresh tap water.  He lay there lopsided. Obviously mouth to mouth was out of the question so I tried resetting him in the water, holding him upright, gently talking to him, “C’mon buddy, come on … I know, I’m sorry. Don’t die on me now ya little bollix, come one!” Finally, out of desperation I tugged hard on his tail which must have acted like the equivalent of one of those electric shock paddles you see on ER, because he shot across the tank like a bolt of lightening, and banged his head off the far side of it. He spent the 15 or 20 minutes after that darting back and forth along the container, white eyed and jittery.

Once back in his big tank, he found the darkest corner and stayed there, arse to the sitting room, refusing to acknowledge anyone , regardless of what theme tune was played, for about a week. He eventually forgave me though.

Time passed, stuff happened, I graduated, and the Cider Appreciation Society grew as more and more people got to know the ‘Wonderfish’ .  I had to foster him out on a couple of occasions when my job, or travel in general took me away. He kept growing, his tanks got bigger and the process of looking after him became almost equivalent to that of looking after a cat or dog.

















His tank sat on a big coffee table by the picture window of my home.  Anyone coming to the house would pass by the window before coming to the door. Whether it was me, a friend or the postman, they got a wiggly welcome from our fishy friend as they passed. He also seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting the neighbours dog.

One day, our little family got bigger.

I had gone back to college for a while to study photography. Arriving into school one wet Cork morning, I found a stray.  Sitting on top of the print dryer in the Photography department lobby was a tiny tank with half a fingers depth of water. A  little shell-shocked Black Moor was blubbing away nervously in the pool. Crazy lady immediately made an appearance and  started cooing and clucking over the petrified creature.

He had been brought in by my tutor, Harry Moore, in order to find a home for him.  His nervous state was the result of having been cycled down Barrack Street Hill strapped to the front of a bicycle.

I rang my other half  to ask if we could keep him. Once he got over his confusion as to how exactly one could randomly ‘find a fish’, he agreed that we could adopt the little mite.

I called him Harry, after his original carer.

Knowing that Cider may not take to having his space invaded after so many years, I decided to quarantine Harry for a while. I submerged his tiny little tank into Cider’s enormous one, and he was allowed out for supervised walks once a day. I always made sure that the little hatch on the top of his tank was closed down before going to bed.

One Sunday morning however, tragedy struck.

I came downstairs and went to make coffee. It took me a minute to notice my other half standing, one hand on hip the other scratching his head, in front of the fishy mansion.

“What’s up?”
“Harry’s gone!”
“What do you mean Harry’s gone?”
“Missing! Not there! Vanished gone!”

I stood in front of the tank and saw what he meant. Our poissons pool was sans Harry. His little tank was empty, hatch open and flapping in the current. Cider was hanging out at the front of the tank, nonchalantly eyeing us in a disturbingly Dirty Harry-esque kind of way, occasionally spitting a stone at the glass. I was perplexed, but soon my head was filled with crazy thoughts. Cider was easily 10 times bigger than Harry, but he couldn’t have could he?

I neurotically searched out the tank back to front looking for some evidence laying among the stones, all the while returning to Cider’s crazy eyes and unapologetic glooping, desperately trying to allow logic to convince me I was wrong.

Finally, out of the corner of my eye, something from behind the filtration system caught my attention. It was Harry! Closer inspection made me realize that the poor little bastard had been sucked, arse first, into the back of the filter. I switched off the air intake and, slowly, he fell out.

I had two theories about how he got there. One, that I hadn’t closed down his lid properly, he got out, and Mr. This Is My Town Cider had run him out of it straight into the danger zone. Two, and this is the theory I prefer, he got out and, in an effort to relive his youth, Cider persuaded him to have a go at swimming around the filter cos you know, tis great craic!

So there we were, with one unremorseful psycho fish, and one completely tailless wreck.  I gently guided the now practically crippled Harry back into his little tank and tightly shut down the lid. I sat there for ages just looking at him, wondering if he would make it, crying and calling myself a ‘bad mother’.  Everyday I would put a couple of small catfish pellets into his tank, but he’d just loll there and watch them drop.  Every so often he would attempt to follow them, but the lack of a tail fin made swimming almost impossible.

I wondered how long he would last.

Strangely, as the weeks passed, he began to find some strength, and started grabbing the pellets as they passed him. Unbelievably, as the months went by, his tail grew back. I couldn’t quite find it in me to let him out of his little cell though, for fear of another ‘accident’.

About a year down the line, however, that decision was taken out of my hands.

Clearly, I had done it again. I’d fed him and not securely refastened the lid. Once again, I walked into the room to find the other half standing in front of the tank with his hands on his hips. Terrified, I ran over to it . My multiple visions of carnage all disappeared when I got there though. Harry had gotten out alright, but there, at the far end of the tank, were the two,  the small nestled between the fins of the big, cuddling.


I couldn’t believe it. They became quite dependant on each other over the years.  Harry would groom Cider, and Cider would wrap his fins around Harry in their downtime, and mind him like an egg he was hatching.

Once free to roam around the big tank, Harry started to become fatter. As Cider got older, he began to lose his colour. Once the colour of brass, he started developing white patches all over his body.  His tail just kept on growing, spreading out behind like a white-haired banshee.

Eventually, a dramatic change came over all our lives. My relationship with the other half ended, and I needed to fix myself. I decided to leave the country. The fate of Cider and Harry caused me great distress. Unable for the tears anymore, and even though they didn’t really have the space or the energy, my parents came to the rescue and offered to look after him until I got home.

As I left the two boys in the family homestead, my dad tormented me with jibes about how he would look after him until he was big enough to take pike fishing. He would fake lack of understanding, and harass me with plans to batter and fry them for Mum’s Saturday tea, but behind my back he was buying bridges and bubble machines like the one that drove the fish mad in Finding Nemo. Mum regularly popped into the sitting room to chat to them when she’d get up in the morning.

Dad devised an ingenious pipe and pump system to empty the water out of the tank when it need to be cleaned.  He’d make little videos of the two boys and send them to me over the internet. Last time I was home, Cider was almost completely white. He seemed to have stopped growing. He was clearly a little less active than the last time I’d seen him, but still his same old cantankerous self.  Harry has almost quadrupled in size and his colour is changing too. His whole belly has gone from black to gold.

Sitting there watching them grooming and regarding each other in the mirrored end of the tank, I started building their new home in my head. When I finally return to Ireland, I will buy a little cottage in the countryside.  In it I want to build a tank as wide as it is long and inset it in the wall, space for them both to retire.

I said to my dad before I left the house to return to my job in Dubai, “I’m going to have to provide for them little feckers in my will I reckon!”

It’s been almost five years since I first left Cider and Harry with my parents.

This morning I received a text from home. It reads,


“Deepest regrets, Harry is an orphan. Cider left us last night. Love Dad.”
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Daddy kindly buried Cider under the apple tree in our back garden, anointing the re-packed earth with a can of Scrumpy Jack in honour of an incredible life.

He even wrote a poem for him;

Beneath the rain and windswept sky,
We bid dear Cider fish Goodbye.
While in the Derg the Pike did cry,
'Tis with us the fish should lie.

With patience and with fortitude,
We tolerate his solitude.
A tasty dish, he should be ours,
But for a promise made.

Beneath the Apple tree he rests,
Cider soaked with Pappa's Best.
Now Harry swims a Lonesome trail.
Missing still that Angel's tail

Poor Harry! What will he do?
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I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the many people who have helped me look after Cider over the years; Sean, Carmel, Martin, Nano & Steve, Julie, Ciaran, Pet & Manus, but most of all Mum & Dad. He wouldn’t have made it this far without you.
xxx
M.