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(This entry is long, morbid and a little gross...so read at your own risk. But I really keep this blog to remember all of the funny times we have with our kids, so that we can look back and laugh at all of the fun times we've had. You've been warned.)

I'm just saying...Rigby had better be careful. As of today, we have lost 5 pets (2 rats and 3 fish) in the last 3 months.

Last year we lost our awesome mastiff, Kodiak. It was super hard for all of us, but especially Anna.

Then a few months ago, Anna's pet rat, Rosa died. Ugh. Well, the first rat was traumatic enough...but then, the second rat was getting sick, and had a big tumor. It was *time*. But after losing Kodi, and then Rosa, we didn't have the heart to put her through the upset of euthanizing her second rat. So, we took the rat, had it euthanized, and then PUT IT BACK in the cage. Seriously. I know that is all kinds of weird (and thank goodness my vet knows me and has a sense of humor) , but it was way less traumatic 'finding her' than it would have been to take her to be put to sleep. (And, never mind how traumatic it was for ME to do the 'finding', because in the 2 minutes between when I took the stupid dead rat and put it into a cute little box with pink fabric and went to tell Anna that Daisy had died, RIGBY jumped up onto my desk and was mauling the rat when I came back to get the box to go let Anna say goodbye to her. It was like a scene from a B-movie. I had to wipe the dog slobber off of the rat before I took it to Anna. Rigby is lucky I didn't kill him THEN!) But anyway...I digress.

So, 3 years ago, we bought a beta fish, and Anna named her Jasmine. Jasmine has (amazingly) lasted all this time. But cleaning her tank was always a pain, so we got the bright idea to get one of those tank cleaner fish. Well, by the time we left PetSmart, that 1 fish had turned into 4 tank cleaner fish (Shark 1, 2, 3 and 4) and a snail (Candy Cane). They assured us that they would be fine with the beta. Well...it seemed they would be, at first. But about a week later, Shark 1 and Shark 2 bit the dust. *sigh* Here we go again. After Curtis and I conferred and agreed that fish get flushed, not buried, we told Anna. She took it pretty well. (Although, she did ask if she wrote a note to ask how Shark 1 and Shark 2 were doing and flushed it down the toilet, would it get to them. I told her, "No, but it will clog the toilet.") But then, a few days later, Jasmine went floating to the bottom of the tank. We weighed our options and decided that if we could get away with swapping her out for a similar looking beta to avoid more little girl heartache, we would. We just had to make sure Anna didn't notice Jasmine before the next day. We planned to say she was just 'sitting' at the bottom (which she *did* used to do sometimes) if Anna asked. That was until I checked in the morning and found that the damned snail takes her tank cleaning job seriously. She was SITTING ON DEAD JASMINE on the bottom of the tank. EEWWW!!! Of course, this is AFTER Curtis left for work, too...leaving me to pry the nasty snail off of the dead fish on my own. Did I say EEEWWWWW!!??!!

But, all's well that ends well (so far). PetSmart had a nice supply of red/purple Jasmine knock-offs the next day, and I made the swap. So far, it seems to have gone undetected. But seriously...I'm DONE with pets dying around here!

So, Rigby, you're the last man standing. And since I'm pretty sure that Pomeranian knock-offs are harder to match than beta-fish, I'm hoping you hang in there for awhile.