Sometimes, being a goldfish can be tough. Growing up in the fair was even tougher, and life could get pretty crazy.
We were constantly moving around, and even though it was fun to see new sights and people all the time, we really wanted a home to call our own. Some people say goldfish won at fairs don’t last very long (which really hurts our feelings), but not our owners! Olivia Steidle and Bella Kurpis won us at the Elizabethtown Fair a few weeks ago, fed us, gave us a home and named us. We’re Fergie, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, and we’ve been having a blast in our new home at Elizabethtown College!
Life with our new owners has been going swimmingly so far. The tank we share is definitely a step up from our old home at the fair. We have rocks, seashells and even a hammock!
One of our favorite things to do is hang out on or hide under our hammock. We’ve heard humans feel the same way about their giant hammocks too!
But something humans don’t seem to like are rocks. Even though we get fed plenty, there’s nothing tastier than a good rock after dinner! The only problem is we can’t seem to chew them very well, so we have to spit them out. We even turn it into a competition: who can spit their rocks the furthest? That’s one of our favorite games, but we can get pretty loud if we aren’t careful. We try our best to behave, but we can’t always get along—we’re siblings, after all!
Fergie is the largest of us and can be a bit of a bully when she’s hungry. We stick together though, and are best friends most of the time. It’s only been a few weeks since we started living in the tank together, but we have adjusted well and keep each other company when our owners are in class. While they’re busy learning, we play our rock-spitting game or hide-and-seek since we have so much room and so many neat decorations in our tank.
Our owners haven’t had us for too long, but they definitely love us and have a lot of patience! Sometimes we don’t always notice when they feed us until the food starts to sink to the bottom of the tank. We try to remember not to be too loud when we spit rocks because we know our owners are studying hard, but we don’t always remember.
Through it all, our owners have believed in us. They even taped inspirational quotes to the tank, so we always remember to do our best! We really want to live up to our namesakes and make our owners proud. They hope we’ll become “strong, independent fish” someday. We may have started off as lonely fish from the fair, but now we’re in the big leagues at college! With our owners’ help, we’re confident we can achieve our goals and become happy, successful goldfish. Maybe we can even be famous, like the humans we were named after! One thing’s for certain, we’re happy as clams at Etown!
