Positive Redundancy #22 We bought a shark!

‘We got a shark’ , I said,

‘What’, my husband said into the phone.

‘We bought a shark’, I said.

‘A What?’ my husband asked again. So I talked slower ‘Today….we…..bought …a …..shark’.

‘For a moment there, I thought you said you bought a shark!’ He laughed.

‘We did’ I replied.

This has been the same conversation I have with everyone I meet, since we bought the shark! It is wearing thin now. I actually speak slowly and de..lib..er..ate..ly but the next question is always the same ‘a what?’.

So okay maybe it was a somewhat rash purchase – it looked cute – well okay maybe not cute, more impressive in a blokey kind of way.

It needed a companion fish apparently, someone who wasn’t passive, but not aggressive. So my daughter chose the most unfortunate fish in the garden centre. The poor paranoid white fish – who spent the first 2 weeks flat-out, swimming while looking behind him, trying to avoid any contact with the shark. The shark won’t attack anything if he is full of food apparently – but we haven’t tried out that theory yet.

We had it two weeks and Robert wanted to clean out the tank. He put his hand in to lift out some fish tank furniture – namely a replica castle (incase the fish ever feel under siege) and  got bitten by the shark!

My husband is six-foot tall and the shark is 2 inches long – he has small fish syndrome apparently. It wasn’t a big cut, but my husband is on warfarin so a small nick is like a fountain of blood. ‘Get your hand out of there – he’s in for the kill now,’ I said.

We called the garden centre and found out we have to use two nets (above and below) to catch the shark, then put him in a saucepan and quickly put the lid on or he will literally flip out.

So Robert did that (I looked on, from the safety of the sun room!) and after he had cleaned the actual tank – he opened the lid and the shark was floating belly up. Oh my god – we only had him two weeks. So we googled this sudden death in fish syndrome – only to find sharks do this when they feel trapped they ‘play dead’. So we quickly put him back in the tank and dropped in some food – wakey-wakey – the shark rolled over, alive again!

I think we need to get a bigger warm water tank – to give Sharkey more space, but also to have the conversation started – we have TWO sharks now!