Dec 1, 2017 4 min read

Their names are Lourdes and Diego, or Nancy and Alfonso, depending on whom you ask. They joined Merman in the glass bowl last week, after the farmer noticed that Merman was bored.

Merman is a crimson and feathery male beta. My daughter brought him home in a small glass vase after an impromptu trip to the pet store. The farmer, who has a special affinity for dogs, squirrels, tomato plants and all living things, added some pink gravel.

“He needs a friend,” the farmer said, and off to the pet store he went. There, he learned that if you put two beta fish in the same bowl, they will fight to the death. Instead, the manager suggested a pair of frogs, small enough to coexist and, apparently, benign enough for Merman not to try to eat them.

This called for a bigger bowl, better food, and names. The three of them now live on the kitchen island, a high-traffic area where the humans in this house often pause to observe. The one frog (is it Lourdes or Diego?) spends most of the day tucked between the gravel and the lip of the glass bowl, backing out of the tight spot only to drift to the surface for a breath of air. The other frog is more active, doing its frog-stroke up and down and around the fish all day. I worry that this frog is taking the food meant for its partner, who languishes in the gravel, hungry and weak.

And Merman? He swirls around showing off his bright plumage, imperious and snobby and seeming not to notice the pair of tiny, gray nymphs moving around him.

“Do you think they will have babies?” I ask the farmer. He asked the store for a male and a female, but who knows. They look identical.

“We’ll see eggs first,” the farmer said. Then tadpoles, then baby frogs. The prospect of that has me more excited than I’d ever thought I could be about a fish and two little frogs.

Growing up we had two goldfish, purchased at a five-and-dime store and kept in a small glass bowl on a shelf in the family room. Rock was large and Herbie was small and they lived for years, sustained by a daily pinch of food and clean water every week or so. I can still see my dad carrying the bowl to the bathroom sink, where he would set things right with fresh tap water, shaking his head in frustration that he had to add this task to his hundreds of others.

And I remember the day my sister met me at the front door as I came home from school.

“Herbie died,” she said. Was it ich? Had Rock finally had enough and killed him? More likely it was old age.

As our little underwater family has grown, the farmer is thinking about an actual tank and a filter and maybe a little playground of castles. That seems like a lot of work; besides, the trio seem happy as they are. Every morning I light jar candles and place them around the tank. Merman will swim from one flame to another.

Lourdes and Diego, on the other hand, are oblivious. One of them is hiding and the other is bouncing off the walls. Yesterday I noticed that the busy one’s webbed feet and torso are getting bigger. For a brief, hopeful moment I thought Lourdes may be expecting, but with Diego spending all day hiding in the gravel, I don’t think that’s in the cards. And now that I think of it, we may not have a Lourdes and a Diego, but a Diego and an Alfonso. Or a Lourdes and a Nancy.

Who knows? They’re fun to watch.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.