If it were conceivable that a fish might author a memoir, it would be likely terse. While someone actually researched the attention span of a goldfish (9 seconds), there is a story making the rounds since 2015 (Time magazine) that the Twenty-First Century human is a little worse (8 seconds). A Forbes article I believe recently postulated that humans have the capacity to recall in enormous detail. I had always understood this, when reading translations of Homer’s lliad and The Odyssey, Greek stories passed down orally for millennia until written down about 900 BC. Or perhaps, the truth has less to do with people versus a finned vertebrate. Perhaps goldfish just have less to think about.
I disagree.
Sorry, I was distracted for a moment. As I was saying, when I consider my current objectives as it relates to having a pet for companionship, a goldfish, or rather three of them in my backyard pond, suit me now. Where I shared my life and San Diego home for 25 years with 5 dogs and 4 cats, as well as 3 adolescent boys (for the middle dozen years), my wife and I have settled in quite happily without pets per se. There is a last, aging cat we attend which comes and goes as it pleases (often in the middle of the night).
Three or four times a day, I step up to the pool, and all three fish swim to their accustomed feeding station for a few flakes. There’s very little expectation from either species; neither do I expect “silly pet tricks” in exchange for food like Seaworld used to do with seals and orcas (the wind carrying away my granddaughter’s offering of flakes does not count), nor is there any real pleasantries exchanged between us. But for the previously described short attention span or memory, I might attribute their standoffishness to an accidental nearly-complete draining of their pond last month.
Before solving a frequent need to clean out sludge, I had been experimenting with methods to remove the filter more efficiently than my previous times. Three times before, I dropped the sludge catching contraption into the pond or knocked in a small boulder. However, my last approach misaligned the stream of water from the pump just enough overnight to nearly drain the 400 gallon pool. An early morning inspection of the pool found 3 goldfish holed up at the bottom in 4 inches of water. Refilling the pool expeditiously, the goldfish remained out of sight at the bottom as the murky water settled. Casualties were expected: I fished out (pardon the pun) 2 dead minnows, and their 2 soon-to-also-expired minnow companions. Confident of the survivors’ short memories, I am nevertheless fortunate that these fish, bought for a few bucks at the local PETCO, have forgiven their benefactor for a near-death experience.
It's a Dog's Life 