Maybe this is sad. Or cruel. Or pathetic. But it's also definitely funny.

Jacob loves fish. Stephanie bought him a small fish tank with two fish, both of which died after a water change after a couple of weeks. Stephanie told Jacob that the fish died, and ever since he's been walking by the fish tank, pointing and saying, "Fishies died?"

I wrote in the previous post about going to Fairbanks this past Saturday night for the Indigo Girls concert and leaving the boys with Gretchen. Before we left him, we told him we were going to Fairbanks to get more fish. We knew we couldn't come home empty handed, and so after the concert was over, we headed to Wal Mart to pick up four new fish. We were camping that night and driving back to Circle the next day, so we told the clerk at Wal Mart that these fish wouldn't make it into the tank until  the next afternoon, and that he should bag each fish seperately to increase its chances of survival. Each one was in it's own clear plastic bag, filled with water and tied at the top. We set the four bags next to each other in a cardboard box and set them in the floorboard of the backseat of the truck. Sure enough, by the time we got home the next day, one of the fishes was dead. We simply left that one in the car and brought in the three survivors and presented them to Jacob.

He was thrilled. He was excited to see the fish, and he really loved the fact that they were not anchored to the tank, but that he could hold and carry around the plastic bag filled with water and one goldfish. We really had to work to convince him to let us put the fish in the tank. Still, he was happy, and we didn't think anything more about the dead fish that was still in the plastic bag filled with water, in the cardboard box on the floorboard of the backseat.  

Until the next day when Stephanie drove to the post office to check the mail.  Of course Jacob climbed all over the truck and quickly discovered the fish in the bag. Stephanie let him carry the bag into the house and play with it. By the time I got home, he was carrying it all around the house like it was his new best friend.

Jacob made sure his fish friend was with him while watching his Thomas and Friends video, because fish like trains, right?

And of course Jacob wanted to introduce his new pal Fish-in-a-Bag to the other tank fish. Perhaps they could all be friends! 

When Jacob goes to see what mom is doing, fish gets to come along. "You still with me fishy? Good fishy"

Now this is gross, I know, but since the fish was dead, it floated conveniently to the bottom of the bag, allowing Jacob to hold the fish between his fingers though the bag and (eegad!) kiss the two day dead fishy. I could have stopped him, but I was taking the picture.