Every pet has its good points. They all bring their own unique brand of animal fun to the family, but the best advice I can give you is, get a fish. Getting a pet is a lot like getting a new boyfriend or girlfriend. Chances are you are going to get tired of them and when you do it’s best that they live in a tank.
Fish are great. You always know where they are, you’re never going to find a fish eating out of your garbage, and they don’t jump up on the kitchen table and start licking the plates.
Fish don’t lick at all. I’ve never seen a fish on its back licking its private parts like a candy cane and that’s not only because I’ve never seen a fish tongue; I’m not even sure they have private parts. If they do, at least they have more class than my dog and would never mount another fish or start grinding on its castle and stare me down while they’re doing it.
You don’t worry as much about a fish. No one in the house ever panics and yells, “Where’s the fish? Have you seen the fish? Oh my god, did the fish get out? He’s going to attack the neighbors again!”
Fish don’t get hit by cars, run away from home, or go missing in the middle of the night. You have never seen a flyer taped to a telephone pole with a close-up picture asking Have you seen this fish?
And they don’t bother your guests. A fish isn’t going to jump on the visitors to your home and run around their legs and pee at the same time. Do fish pee? Probably, but I know they don’t pee on my guests in the hallway. They also won’t grab a disgusting saliva-soaked stuffed toy and jam it into your guest’s crotch until they agree to play tug-of-war with it. Fish don’t fetch.
No one gets offended when someone brings their fish to a hotel, because they don’t. And if they did, no one would know. I suppose you could smuggle them in in a jar, some crazy fish lover probably has, but who gets hurt?
They’re clean too. Their tanks can get a little funky and grow green algae on the side, but you’ve got to love animals that you can wash with a sponge. Sure, a fish smells, but only when they come out of the water, and if they’re out of the water they won’t be around for long.
Do you know what a fish eats? Flakes. My dog eats flakes off the side of the dining room table because there’s no amount of food that can satisfy her. We have to make a family trip to Costco, and two of us haul a fifty-pound bag of sweet potato-and-salmon-flavored food onto the cart, push it to the parking lot, load it into the car, drive it home, cut it open, put smaller amounts of it in jars, and in a week do it all over again.
The only thing my fish ever got from Costco was a bigger tank and a plastic skull he could swim through.
Fish don’t beg. You only see one eye at a time. It’s hard to beg with one eye. They don’t shed. They don’t drool. You don’t have to walk them in the rain and the snow. They don’t walk on the furniture. They don’t climb on the table. You don’t collect their feces in a box. They don’t scratch your face. They don’t stand at the end of the bed and stare at you when you’re kissing your wife.
All they do is swim. All day. All night. To the peaceful hum of the filter. And when they die, it’s a quick trip to the toilet and “goodbye.”
Fish are the best.