Blondie Maeng-Royster

SWIM IN PEACE
Blondie Maeng-Royster
December 2006-April 2009

Blondie, along with two other fish and a 15-gallon fish tank was my first Christmas gift from Justin in 2006. Justin bought three guppies for the purpose of starting the water's life cycle before putting in the fish we really wanted. As sad as that sounds, we had little intention of keeping the fish for an extended period of time. Shortly after Christmas, two fish died and Blondie was the only survivor. Blondie was the most beautiful orange guppy in the world. In his youth, he swam with great confidence and fierce, with glowing orange color and a full and powerful fin. After the two guppies died, he lived alone in the tank for months and made the entire 15-gallon tank his own.

We went to Petco one day to buy Blondie a friend. I insisted we buy a couple of friends, and with Justin disapproving of my purchases, we brought home three fishes. Wanda was weird looking, Albie was fat and resembled a helicopter, and Tuxie looked like he was wearing a tuxedo. We are certain that Blondie did not appreciate new friends, and considered the new fish to be intruding in his home. A few days later, Albie, who was apparently a girl fish and pregnant, had babies. And from that day on, Blondie took a liking to Albie and chased her around relentlessly until the day Albie died. Wanda died only a few days after brining him home. To this day, we do not know if Blondie chased Tuxie (the other male) around because they were friends or if it was fierce competition and hatred. Blondie and Tuxie fought over Albie, but in the end, Blondie always remained by her side. Albie had more babies, this time with Blondie fathering the newborns. Those babies mated, and more babies came, and this went on for many generations. Blondie lived with his children, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren, and possibly even his great great grandchildren. Albie died, and later Tuxie did too. The entire line of generations produced by Blondie and Albie also started to die off. Over the last three years, he outlived everybody except for one: Arcus. Arcus (named after an opaque ring in the cornea), is now alone.

Blondie outlived over fifty fish, but he definitely weakened and aged over the years. Regardless of the fin rot which worsened as well as the deterioration of his body, he fought. He even outlasted the bad quality of water that killed most of our fish and a three hour car ride to Santa Barbara when I moved. In the last month, he has been unable to swim and when we left for New York, we were certain that he would not make it to see us come home. To our surprise, Blondie fought and swam up for his fish food when we returned. In his final days, he was completely unable to swim and he sat on the rocks at the bottom of the tank. He moved his body across the tank to the front that faces us and died. We considered his efforts to move to the front of the tank, his goodbye as he did us a favor when it came to removing him from the tank.

In the past, we have flushed our fish down the toilet, but for Blondie that was not an option. We put him in a Tiffany's box (with food), and tied my favorite Burberry ribbon around the box. For the time being, we are freezing him in order to take him with us to Riverside this weekend for a proper burial. This may seem a bit extreme, but he was our first pet and a crucial part of our relationship throughout the years. We will miss you Blondie but I hope you have endless gallons of water to swim in with only the most beautiful women fish to chase!