News Flash Fish!

This is a picture of Fish, who lives in my "pond", a.k.a. the sunken bathtub in my backyard. Except we can no longer call him Fish, because he is no longer alone! In fact, he has never been alone. There are two fish in the pond! I had just never seen the other one before since he (or she) is camouflaged: he has lovely black spots. I feel better knowing that Fish is not swimming around in lonely splendor, but has had a companion all this time, through the winter ice, the leaf deluges of fall and spring and all the other no doubt fascinating day by day dramas of life in the tub. Where did he come from, you ask? Well, clearly I bought him. Last year or the year before; I have some vague memory of getting a couple of cheap goldfish at Wal Mart and dropping them into the pond, saying, "Good luck, guys!" and promptly forgetting about them. I was surprised as hell when I saw Fish alive this spring and it didn't even occur to me that there might be more than one.

So, we needed a name change since calling Fish Fish, while descriptive, is clearly just not descriptive enough. Drawing on my vast resources of creative nomenclature, I have decreed that from now on we have Fish One and Fish Two. What we all really want to know, of course, is whether this is going to lead to Little Fishes Three, Four, Five and Six Hundred and Twenty Three. According to this helpful article, it's unlikely. Apparently goldfish aren't sexually mature until they're two (wow. They live past two?) and, surprise, surprise, you have to have a boy and a girl goldfish, because, and I quote: Typically males will chase around a female within an hour, and all eggs will have been spent within an hour after that. Males drive the female into and amongst the spawning media where both release their sex products; with an occasional rest break every few minutes.. Isn't that cute? It sounds just like a night at the bar! They even stop for a cigarette now and then. It would be awesome if Fish One and Fish Two had babies, but I'm not going to hold my breath. For all I know, they're both girls, or both boys, and I'm not picking them up to investigate further.