Monostichous Monday

monostichous ~ in one line; in one row

Once there was a fish and his name was Tiddler
He wasn’t much to look at with his plain grey scales
But Tiddler was a fish with a big imagination
He blew small bubbles and he told tale tales

That quote is taken from one of my favourite books I used to read to my granddaughter, Tiddler, by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. I’ve read it so often I can probably still recite most of it by heart.

Actually, there are a whole series of books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, but Tiddler remained our favourite. So much so that the granddaughter was desperate for a fish of her own, so being the doting Gramie I am, we went out and bought one. Blue being her favourite colour, she picked a blue Betta fish who lived at Gramie’s house so Gramie could take care of him for her.

Tiddler was not my first Betta. My first was multicoloured and named Merlin. Merlin lived in a large, glass jar with a plant sticking up out of it, which is not a proper environment for a Betta. In my defense, I didn’t know that at the time. The jar and plant were sold together for that purpose as a marketing ploy.

Bettas need a proper size aquarium, filtered water, and a heater. Some gravel in the bottom of the tank and a few plants to look at couldn’t hurt either. All of which Tiddler had. This could be why he lived for 2 ½ years and Merlin only lasted 1.

Yes, sadly Tiddler has passed away to the big fish pond in the sky. He was doing laps in his tank one morning last week (as he often did) and then ended up nose down in his favourite plant, pretending to be a leaf (which I’ve never seen him do before). At the end of the day he was still nose down and he was starting to lose his colour.

He was buried according to the super ancient and special fish death ritual – in other words, I wrapped him up in a maple leaf and buried him in the pond garden with a seashell to mark his grave.

R.I.P. Tiddler