The Ballad of Peter Tosh
Once upon a time in the winter of 1998, a very special fish came into my life. At that time, I was a freshman in college and as one of many attempts to make my dorm room feel like home, I decided to revive my old 10-gallon aquarium and bring it down to school after returning from a break. When I got down to the local pet store and checked out the selection, it was immediately obvious which type of fish I was going to get: piranha. I am not the type of person that necessarily enjoys aggressive pets that need to be fed live prey but the piranha just seemed the most intriguing of all the fish. I was not going to have a tank of pretty angelfish and neons. So I headed home with two piranha less than an inch long and some cubes of frozen bloodworms for food.
The two piranha got along fairly well, or at least I like to think that they did. Piranha are actually very shy and paranoid fish, preferring to hide when possible and, at least in my case, eat under the cover of darkness, so I rarely saw them. They kept eating, progressing from frozen food to tiny feeder fish, and at the end of the academic year, I moved them back to Wisconsin in big plastic bags, which they promptly bit through, bringing them perilously close to their demise. Back in my parents' basement, they also got an upgrade in living conditions by way of a new 55-gallon tank. I worked two jobs that summer and only saw the fish every couple of weeks when I would replenish their supply of feeder goldfish. One afternoon I returned to a terrible sight--the piranha that had always been the bigger of the two had eaten the entire back half of the other and had left him to die. From then on, there was only one.
The remaining piranha and his 55-gallon tank made the trip back to school with me in the fall to occupy an even smaller dorm room. Once I had moved in, my roommate and I realized that our lone fish did not even have a name (we had not named him earlier because of our superstitious belief that fish named too early would die). By way of a piranha at the same university thirty years earlier named Pete (who, incidentally, would not bite the hand that fed him) and a late-night episode of VH1's Behind the Music, the piranha was christened Peter Tosh, for his embodiment of the militant and proud spirit of the underappreciated reggae artist.
It was in that room in Brandt Hall that Peter and I forged a truly special bond. The tank was the centerpiece of the entire room and he appreciated the ample surroundings, often swimming laps to build endurance. We kept the tank stocked with the biggest feeder goldfish and whenever we saw him eat one, we would play "Legalize It" in honor of him. Whenever I was up late on my computer, he would always hover right by the glass on my side of the tank, keeping me company through many late nights. In fact, when I was using my roommate's computer for a week or so after my early Linux experiments rendered my laptop useless, he would swim to the other side of the tank while I was there, which is a touching display of loyalty if I've ever known one.
Peter stayed with me through every move since then, although his tank was never again so close to my computer or bed. You can imagine the heartbreak I felt when I learned that we were moving to Connecticut. Since he could have never survived the move out here (plus piranha are illegal here), my only option was to find a good home for him and I think I did. He is now living with a young family in a new 55-gallon tank back in Indiana and I am told he is doing well (I have the email address of the new owner, just to check in on him). I expect that he has a long life ahead of him and I hope that our time together will always remain in his heart.
Take care, Peter. Legalize it.