Betta Fish

Fifteen or so years ago our first betta fish floated into our lives and hearts as centerpiece for a book club meeting at our house. Since we’d chosen Bless Me, Ultima, a southwestern book with a mythical golden carp as the centerpiece of the tale, I bought a big blue glass bowl, filled it, and slid into it a red (couldn’t find gold) betta, who swam adorably for our dinner guests. We thought he’d live maybe a month, but something was fishy. He kept swimming. After he made clear his intentions to stay afloat, I got him his very own marguerita pitcher, some glass rocks, and a tacky blonde mermaid to keep him company. He was the first of a growing number of little fishes to occupy the pitcher. Eventually the fish du jour was named Fish Boy, title and protagonist of a very dark book by Mark Richards. All our fish are literary and male.

The masculine gender of Betta spendens, a.k.a. Siamese fighting fish, is the hot item, thus Fish BOY. Males have more dramatic flowing fins and coloration, intensified by selective breeding, while females have shorter fins, shorter bodies and thicker middles (humph!), but females bred for sale wear as wide a range of colors as males. Shades are subdued yet far from the dowdiness of their wild sisters dressed in olive drab. It seems ironic that Mother Nature opts for plain Jane females, but since creatures in the wild are moving targets, she protects her daughters by denying them the flashy bull’s eye coloration of males. Breeders use fashion designers’ pallets, creating a rainbow of hues for the fishies, from blue, red, yellow, orange, cream, and white to iridescent blue, green and turquoise (current Fish Boy’s shade). The piscine runway glitters with gold, platinum and copper as well. Selective breeding creates scale variations and elaborate fin arrangements like “double-tail,” “half-moon” or “delta tail,” an effect similar to the current fad of “fascinators,” those bizarre, stunningly elaborate little hats the young female British royalty and celebs wear perched on their heads when attending gala events—though in this case the males wear the glamorous finnage.

Perhaps fin envy causes a betta to be pugnacious, a trait for which the tiny two to three inch fish is infamous. Originally they existed in Siam (now Thailand), Malaysia, Vietnam and parts of China, living in puddles, some in oxen hoof prints, and in stagnant ponds, rice paddies and sluggish streams. Prior to the eighteen hundreds, children collected them for village contests. Adults took note and gathered their own pla kat, which means tearing or biting fish, who amused and thrilled owners by ripping fins off opponents and damaging scales in a may-the-best-fish-win arena livened up by exorbitant bets of $$$, homes, wives, family members. In the wild, fish fights arise as tiny tempers clash. The fish intimidate each other by flaring their gill covers to look bigger and badder and threaten and nip at each other until one yields. The event takes a few minutes and then tentative peace reigns in the paddy. In “civilization,” fights are longer, more savage, less civilized. Fish are bred and trained to be mini pit bulls with gills.

Though males are aggressive and will batter their own reflections, they’re nannies for their own offspring, up to a point. Prior to nanny-hood, a male flares his gills like flaring nostrils, twists his body and spreads his fins like a peacock spreads his tail, the betta wolf whistle. In response a ready and willing female darkens in color, blushing in horizontal stripes that spell “yes” to her suitor, fluffs her gills and slowly curves and uncurves her body. The male gives her the old fish eye and blows a nest of bubbles on the surface. They circle one another beneath the bubbles until he wraps his body around hers in a “nuptial embrace,” squeezing from ten to forty-one eggs out with each fish hug and fertilizing them. By mouth he gathers sinking eggs and tucks them into the nest. When all eggs are released and fertilized, he chases Mama away since she’s understandably famished and ordering eggs over easy. Papa tends the nest and scoops up any eggs slipping through the bubbles. After 24-36 hours, the eggs hatch. Larvae hang in the nest, tails pointed downward, and absorb the yolk sacks, turning into free swimming fry babies in two to three days. It’s Papa’s turn for eviction when he salivates while gazing on his babes. The fry depend on their gills at this point, but in three to six weeks a labyrinth organ develops and allows them to breathe oxygen from the surface, which is handy when feeding.

Fish Boy has a pug nose that pops up at supper time. His upturned mouth scoops food efficiently because he’s a surface feeding carnivore who eats larvae and bumbling bugs that fall into the water but is content with flaked, frozen or freeze dried shrimp brine, blood worms, Daphnia, etc. Some owners grow their own shrimp brine. Not I, though I pamper F. B. by tossing him an occasional annoying live insect.

Each Fish Boy is more than living art. Each has his quirks, like the one who was enamored of his ceramic mermaid companion and slept under her armpit. Curious and responsive, they watch their humans with interest and can even be taught to swim through hoops, jump or pull a string to ring a bell for food (ding!).

Alas, Fish Boys live but four to five years, and their deaths grieve me. We respectfully bury them in flower beds, where they continue to give us beauty as they enrich the soil and flowers spring up to mark their tiny graves.

RIP.