One of my favorite Robert Frost poems is “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
Basically, Frost meant that nothing of beauty or value lasts forever.
Mr. Frost wouldn’t have written that if he kept goldfish.
Like coyotes and Canada geese, goldfish seem indestructible.
For years I had a snooty opinion about goldfish. Only people who didn’t really know anything about keeping fish raised them, I reasoned.
Real fish keepers like me raised true exotics like angels, discus, veiltail guppies and more difficult varieties of tropical fish.
I’d been raising fish since I was in grammar school. I loved to brag that many of my fish actually bred in the tank.
Which is why I was shocked when my wife Gosia and our daughter Natalia came back from a local pet shop with a shiny member of the carp family.
I’d purchased a bunch of freshwater plants for my community aquarium, and the plants were infested with snails.
“The girl at the store said goldfish eat snails,” Gosia said.
“Yeah,” I conceded. “But it will also eat all the ¼-inch baby guppies.”
“It only cost 16 cents,” Natalia said.
“That’s because it’s a feeder fish,” I said. “I used to buy them by the dozen when I had an Arowana.”
“You can just flush it down the toilet,” Natalia said.
Gosia nodded.
I looked at them with horror.
“I can’t do that!”
So, we set up new Airbnb accommodations for the newest family member.
“What will you call him? Er-her? Er-it?” Gosia asked.
I told her. “AU.”
“Hey you?” Gosia said, puzzled. “What kind of name is that?”
“Au, mom,” Natalia explained. “Like the element gold in the periodic table.”
Just as an experiment, I dumped in snails. They grew quite fast. Au ate not a one.
However, AU did accept tiny pieces of shrimp from my fingers.
Before long, I bought two more goldfish to provide company for AU.
I read up on goldfish.
The Japanese samurai believed the fish represented wealth, health and good luck.
The Chinese developed a goldfish with a hideous bulging body and telescopic eyes that remind me of the nun who caught me reading True Detective magazine behind my textbook.
Goldfish live a long time before going to that giant toilet bowl in the sky (as a friend of mine’s grandfather once said).
Many goldfish live 20 years or longer.
I was stunned to learn how big goldfish can get, especially if raised in ponds.
This year, in France, a goldfish named Carrot tipped the scales at 67 pounds.
It had a belly like William Shatner’s.
Wow, if my Au gets that big, I’m changing its name to Goldzilla.
Hank Nuwer won second place this year for the Alaska Press Club’s “Best Humor Column.”
