Adieu, Pierre

I've eulogized fish before. After his successful run in the New York production of Laika Dog In Space, cast member and goldfish Patrick McGoohan retired to a comfortable bowl in my apartment only to pass away quietly some months later.  He was honored with a short play in Too Much Light which ran for just one weekend. But this is not a eulogy, per se.

I swear that Pierre was acting crazy yesterday.  He was staring right at me and frantically flapping around in the water, wriggling back and forth.  "Sorry, Pierre.  Here's some food."  But when I woke up this morning, he wasn't in his bowl.  Whether his suicide was intentional or not, he'd leaped out of his bowl and flip-flopped his way all the way to the window some 18 inches from his bowl.  He was folded over on himself and a bit dried up.  Still, when Pierre's predecessor, Maurice, pulled a similar stunt, although he was notoriously dried out - "his tail was like a potato chip" - my mom plopped him back into his bowl and he came back to life, fully recovered in about a day.  Maurice lived to be five years old.  We were, alas, not so lucky with Pierre who after a morning back in his bowl had still not un-folded.  Also, the whole situation really detracted from the pleasure of finally being able to actually sleep in a little this morning (7:30! woo hoo!).

As the saying goes: life throws curve balls.

As my toddler succinctly put it when asked to relate what had happened to Pierre: "the fish jumped out of the bowl and mama was sad."