A Fish Tale

Today, on All My Guppies, The little Thinker Girl tries to arrange a quiet algae dinner with Herman the Hermit, but is foiled by the snails who, toddling nicely at the ripe old age of the five days, have developed a severe case of Herman worship (T1, who wanted me to attach a picture of T2 glued to his tuxedo sleeve, mentioned how well he empathized with a guy who only wanted to have a nice quiet date without snails or siblings trying to tag along.)

Herman, preferring to be left alone by everybody except the little Thinker Girl, was last seen plastered to the glass border of Tankland, screaming “Get. Them. Outta here!”

Minions Holding the Floor

So Herman the Hermit was discovering his own beauty in the reflective surface of the aquarium, Oscar the Guppy was hiding among the purple plant leaves (apparently nursing some slight from the minions), and yours truly had only enough time for one 3-minute timed drawing.

Normally I don’t ask the minions to pose because they don’t like to hover long enough for a photo. Today, however, they had congregated under the bonsai to hold a secret (and stationary) meeting of the Guppy Poet Society.

Oscar had started the club and invited everyone else (Herman being a Hermit said he’d be happy to make guest contributions) so he felt it was perfectly fair to name it after Guppies. The Minions felt naming the club after guppies devalued their own contributions, and they came up with the idea for uniforms after all. 

The water was soupy with drama, and, contrary to popular opinion, drama does not produce poetry.

Oscar and the Minions were still at odds when the 3 minute buzzer went off. The only thing they managed to agree on was to have flakes for breakfast.

Love and Algae

4 19Under the Flower Tree web

 O Little Thinker Girl, hanging out there,
I care not if you have old clothes or un-abundant hair
For it is not mere beauty that me ensnares.
 
 No, I hide quiet under the boughs, for now from you apart,
Waiting for the algae of our love to grow again between our hearts
Just as it did a just few weeks ago at the very start.
 
P.S.
If you please, a little extra sludge at your feet
Would also be really neat.
The fact that it’s gluten-free makes it a real treat.

–  by Herman the Hermit, guest contributor to the Guppy Poets Society, on the occasion of finding no new algae at the feet of the Little Thinker Girl. 

Make Me Smile

We decided to reconnect our granola, earth-sheltered house to the grid before the first snow fell last November, and, after years of watching every watt, we indulged. 

We used an electric dryer over the winter and  renewed a relationship with our crock pot. I even adopted a school of tetras and a guppy, setting them up  in style with a few plants and a little stone thinker girl.

I added a Plecostomus, also known as a Suckermouth Catfish — technically a bottom feeder — to control  algae.  He was a little shy at first, so I named him Herman the Hermit, resisting the urge to name him after some politician.

Soon, I caught him whispering in thinker girl’s ear, and her smile seemed to grow (he must have been telling her how well he’d clean the tank because he did). Her beaded hat gleams, which made me realize most politician are not bottom feeders.  Bottom feeders performs a useful service, after all.
 
And, anyway, how many politicians would think to make a woman smile by cleaning up without being asked?