I'm not good with pets, I've never been and I've never tried to fool myself into thinking that I was good with them. Once when I was a kid my mom bought me a dog. I remember thinking that it was the greatest thing ever. I don't know what breed of dog it was or anything, probably just a mixed mutt, much like myself, but I remember that I loved him. Oh man, how I loved that dog. I took it to the backyard, fed it, gave it water and played with it all day long. At the end of the day I smelled like wet dog, which really isn't a great smell at all, but at the time I didn't care. The next month I went to the back yard and found a dog skeleton in the yard, apparently you have to feed dogs more than once (Before you call the humane society, I'm just kidding - I usually tell that story to any new dog lover that I meet and they either think it's funny or get very angry and repulsed). The truth is that I did have a dog as a kid, and I did love it, played with it and even fed it every day - one day I was playing with it before school. Before leaving, I put him outside but somehow forgot the gate didn't latch, so the dog got out and we never saw him again. My sister was really upset about that and to this day still reminds me that I left the gate open when "Bambi" ran away (for the record, my sister named the dog. I would have named it Chewbacca if given the choice).

After that, I never really had anymore pets, the exception would be an occasional fish that I would somehow end up killing. They weren't intentional fish murders, they just died for whatever reason and I happened to be around when it happened. I'm innocent, I tell ya'…I'm innocent and you can't prove otherwise. I guess because of my history with pets, my nephew or niece never really experienced what it was like to have a pet of his own until recently.

My niece just discovered the movie "Finding Nemo" and she loves it. She can watch it over, and over, and over, and over again. I had this bright idea that if she loved the movie so much I would buy her and my nephew a small 10 gallon fish tank and get them a few fish. Well, one night while they were asleep I went to Wal-mart and bought all the things I would need to surprise them. I had the tank set up so in the morning they would see it. The kids were jumping up and down with joy the next morning when they woke up and saw the fish. They decided that we would each get a fish and we would each name our fish. My niece decided to name her fish "Nemo". My nephew couldn't decide on one name for his fish, so he asked me if he could name my fish for me. He named my fish "Biraki" and named his fish "The Evil Matoa" I don't know where he came up with those names, but that's what we called them from that day on. Since my nephew got to name two fish my niece wanted to name the last fish so that fish became “Princess” As the days went on they would wake up every morning and run straight to the tank and watch the fish. Every time my niece would go somewhere she would say "bye fish" and every time someone came to the house she would grab their hand and take them straight to the tank so that they could see her fish.

Well, I noticed that the tank was getting a little cloudy so I thought I would clean it while my nephew and niece were away. I went to the store and bought some buckets - one to put the fish in while I cleaned the tank and one to siphon the water from the tank into. To make a long story short I cleaned the tank and all the little rocks in it, then I put the fish back in. Everything was great - the fish were happy swimming in their clean tank, I was happy because I had cleaned it before my nephew and niece got home - everything was great, so I went and got something to drink and started watching a movie. As I was watching the movie I just happened to looked up at the tank and that's when I noticed that one of the fish was not moving. “Biraki” was laying in a weird unnaturally bent position at the bottom of the tank, then I noticed that “Nemo” was floating at the top of the tank with his mouth wide open and a blank stare on it's face. As I looked closer I saw that a third fish, “Princess” was being sucked up against the intake valve of the pump.

I was in shock. I couldn't believe it - I killed three of the kid’s favorite fish. I looked for “The Evil Matoa” and was relived to see that he was still alive swimming lazily in the clean tank. I swear that the fish looked me right in the eyes and then sort of staggered to the back of the tank. He swam to the bottom doing what I would call fish flips then just floated belly up to the top of the tank.

At this moment, there are no survivors in the tank and the kids will be home at any minute. The only thing I can think to do is run to the store and buy replacement fish and hope that he doesn't notice they are different.

This is why I don't have pets.