Amazing goldfish beats the odds and lives for more than two years
Last night I actually completed the Amazing Saltine Challenge!
For those of you who haven’t heard, the task is simple:
Consume six ordinary saltine crackers in sixty seconds.
Sounds easy right? Sure, that’s what everyone thinks until flakes of cracker start launching out their nostrils from laughing so hard. Salivation is the key to succeeding. So if you’re anything like a St. Bernard, you should have no trouble at all.
Yup, no problem until one day you decide to trade up crackers for a 13-inch serrated knife. Elsie, from Plantation, Fla. decided last week to take that challenge.
Elsie, a St. Bernard puppy, couldn’t control her compulsive licking and actually devoured a whole knife last week. The x-rays were impressive, but more importantly, the knife tasted like turkey. Luckily the vet removed the sharp instrument and Elsie has fully recovered.
The owners were amazed she would eat something like that, but if you really want to own a dumb, slobbery pet, hide your knives.
I have a theory some animals, pets or not, are designed to be useless. Take the kangaroo for example. Sure they look cute when they’re little, but for centuries, they’ve endured a major design flaw.
Kangaroos have a neat little pouch to store things in, but for some reason weren’t equipped with long enough arms to reach that pouch. No wonder they have to hop around so much. Nobody else has that much trouble getting a wallet out of their pocket.
Another useless animal is the okapi. Look at it and think about it… yup, useless.
Lest you think I’m an animal hater, I must confess that I do have a pet. It’s a silver-looking, useless goldfish named Goner. Goner is at least 2 years old. Goner is on PCP.
The only other time I’ve had goldfish in my life was in the sixth grade. My brother and I won a handful of the scaly critters at a fair. After a few “puuhleeeses,” dad gave in and bought an aquarium set, signaling the beginning of the end of our swimming pets.
Almost every night for the next two weeks our fish committed suicide and jumped out of the tank. We found their little bodies on the ground and after scooping them up with a paper towel, sent them to the big fishbowl in heaven, aka, the toilet bowl.
So this time around I thought I was sure of what to expect. Let me recount Goner’s brief life story. Two yeas ago I requested, as a joke, that someone bring me a tasty swordfish taco, fresh from California.
I got my wish – only it came in the form of a flour taco shell with a bag of two goldfish in it and a small, blue plastic sword. Hmmm, “swordfish taco.” Get it? Yeah, that was my reaction, too.
The giver of the joke didn’t expect me to keep the fish, so they were aptly nicknamed Flushie and Goner. I took them home and put them in a clear Pyrex bowl for the night. Overnight, the taco shell hardened, and in the morning, since I had no fish food, I decided to break off crumbs to feed them.
This went on for two weeks until my brother reprimanded me, so I spent eighty-nine cents on fish food. Flushie died soon after and I delivered him to the location of his namesake.
Goner, however, hasn’t died, and probably never will. I’ve never seen a fish so happy to live in a Pyrex bowl on my shelf. I refuse to buy an aquarium, because we all will know what will happen if I actually spend money.
Six months ago, Goner did get a house remodeling to a larger glass vase and loves it immensely, or so it appears. It’s surprising he has lasted two years because all he does is gaily swim around, bonking his nose on the glass. Maybe it’s brain damage.
So if you really want to get a pet anytime soon, find one that can do something useful – like eat six crackers in a minute. Just leave the okapi alone.
Garrett Wheeler is a second bachelor’s student in technical theatre design. Send any comments, column ideas or a large “Save Goner” campaign aquarium to wheel@cc.usu.edu.