Peppito

If you’ve known me and my pet-history, then you know that I’m irrationally attached to fish. I assume that this stems from my parent’s rule of “only if it lives in water” which kept my childhood pets limited to a stream of fish and one short-lived, underwater frog. As a young adult living in the city, the options for my first non-watered pet were also limited. Anyway, regardless of the reason, I absolutely love Peppito.

Kelly bought Peppito from the Merry Mart (something like a Walmart), towards the beginning of the year. He is our longest surviving, and most fantastic fish. He’s a teal and purple beta fish. We’re meant to be.

There was one scary incident, Peppito’s first trip to school, where we almost lost him. Ok, where I almost killed him. I was riding him in my basket, carefully as imaginably possible, humming, “fish on board” until I realized the leaking water. I did my best to pour it back in, and to continue even more carefully, but just into Tsinghua campus I noticed the leaks again. This time there was only an inch of water left for the poor guy, and he was looking rough on all accounts. I called Kelly frantically to bring more water, asked my assistant, L, to bring the kids to Chinese, and cried my eyes out on the side of the road thinking the shock had done him in. Amazingly, miracle fish that he is, Peppito survived the rest of the trip to school hanging in a bag off of Kelly’s handlebars, and the next two weeks in L’s house for Christmas break. Yeah, this was also the day of the holiday concert, my 14-hour school day.

After that, Peppito always took a taxi to and from school. Luckily this only happens before and after breaks, and for the week that he was a guest-classroom-pet when we studied water. Other than that Peppito is happy to swim and stay at home, which is relatively problem-free.

With all the time and care that I put into Peppito, you can imagine my shock when I was looking at him on Monday night when it dawned on me that Kelly and I were leaving the next day for an overnight retreat. Immediate panic set in as a jumped up and shouted my revelation. It was 11 p.m. and we were leaving at 8 in the morning. Our closest friend in the complex was already in Shanghai for our “long weekend” which started Sunday and ended Tuesday.

I contemplated calling the neighbor I’d been friendly with at the beginning of the year, and even the nice lesbian couple who happened to live at the top of our building. (I know, what are the odds??) I decided against sounding like the crazy, fish-fanatic that I actually am to neighbors/potential friends.

Instead, like all frantic people of my generation, I turned to the internet. Thank the Universe for my VPN, because I didn’t want to leave this up to HK Google. No thanks! As I was typing, I imagined the worst and wondered what I’d be doing if the resort hadn’t been booked for one of the nights I wanted, forcing me to only be away for one night. Then I found the results. As many of you probably already as you’re reading this, betas can apparently go for a LONG time without being fed. One article I read actually recommended not feeding your beta one day a week. Multiple other articles said these miracle fish can go two weeks without food.

Nevertheless, like the rest of my generation, I know that most of what you read on the internet is pure crap. I was less than thrilled to be putting poor Peppito’s life in the credentials of “beatalovers.com”. When we got back I sent in Kelly first, just saying, “You know why…” She knew.

Of course, he was fine: Peppito, Miracle Fish!

ps...This is my 100th post! Thanks for reading!!