A moment of silence please

For our dear, departed Bob the Snail. It seems Bob has died. A couple of days ago, I think, but its kind of hard to tell with a snail.

I'm bummed. Bob was cool. I'm taking it harder than Andrew who always preferred Fishy the Fish anyway (he's all flash). Frankly, I'm kind of ambivalent about Fishy -- what I liked about him was related to Bob, and now that he's gone . . .

A Fishy and Bob story: "experts" suggest giving your betta fish some exercise by putting a mirror up to their tank now and then. They see their reflection and want to fight the fish. Except that Fishy is a wuss. We'd put the mirror up and he would immediately go and hide behind Bob. I'm not making this up.

The other thing that Fishy did that amused me was that although he was a wimp when faced with other fish (a small toy fish that Andrew had also had Fishy retreating to Bob's protection); he was a fierce fighter of vegetables. We'd feed Bob the occasional pea or bean and Fishy would attack it. This cracked me up and I had a running commentary, which involved Fishy as a drunken Irishman saying "yeah, bean, put 'em up -- I'll fightcha. Yeah, with one fin tied behind my back, that's right . . ."

So bow your heads for a moment please, and think kind thoughts about Bob the Snail, who has left us for greener waters. Steve and Andrew both asked if I was going to go buy another snail. I told them I needed time to mourn.