Feesh! - Firion 4

It certainly has been a long time since I've talked about Firion on the blog. Mostly because I STILL don't have a new cell phone or any device that I can take better quality pictures or videos with. Otherwise, I'd probably be posting a video of him every once in a while, I'm sure. Of course, I still don't have an external hard drive either to save all the footages in either.

Regardless, there are some new, neat things I've noticed about Firion, so I figured why not talk about him some more?

So one night, he was sitting on his plant and staring at me while I was writing another blog post or something on the computer. I decided to stare back at him with my face close to the bowl, and usually that gets some sort of reaction; but he didn't even budge. Since I have his attention though, I decided to start talking to him about wanting to write more about him on the blog with some nice pictures and what not. He still sat there, with his eyes following me, and fins moving to keep himself in the position he was at, which told me that he wasn't asleep. After talking to him for about 5 minutes, I started asking him what he was doing, and why he was just sitting there, staring at me. Then, I asked him whether if he wanted "om noms", his fins flared out, and swam up to the thermometer, which has become his sign of wanting food.

It certainly surprised me to get that sort of reaction when he was just sitting on the plant the whole time I was talking to him, but perhaps he learned to associate the word "om nom nom" with eating due to me saying "om nom nom" when he chews his food. Sure enough, he ate his food when I fed him, and sometimes he's very picky about when he eats his food. I mean, he did do his thing where he asks for food against the thermometer, so obviously he wanted them. But to have triggered him into asking for food at the mention of "om noms" sure was either a lucky coincidence, or that he understands what it is now.

Also, another thing to note about his behavior is that I don't ever need to use the fishnet anymore when cleaning out his bowl. I know that he doesn't like the fish net, since he always swims away from it. Rarely do I really use the fishnet to catch him either. I take advantage of him swimming away from the fishnet by placing the cup that he needs to go in on one side, and the fishnet on the other to sandwich him inside the cup before. Lately though, he'll just swim into the cup himself whenever I put it inside his bowl, allowing me to scoop him up without a hassle.

Vicki told me her stories about how it was hard to clean the bowl for her betta fish before I came around since they couldn't ever really catch the fish in the net, but... yeah. It's leading me to believe that she doesn't know how to treat pets very well. At least, not as well as I do it seems. Firion is so well behaved as opposed to the cats are, that it really annoys me when people give the cats so much more attention when there is a much more deserving pet in the house, just because of people's discrimination against fish for being boring or whatever. Hell, what makes cats so special anyway? If people want to play follow the red dot with animals, a good number of animals will react to a laser pointer. Not all of them will, much like with cats, but I had a dog chase after it, a duck peck at it, Firion will chase it too with his fins out, but I have had a high percentage of toads chasing after them for a long time. Here's a video that we made with two different toads chasing after my laser.

Well, perhaps this will convince some people to consider getting betta fish as pets since they are much more aware of their surroundings, and thus appear smarter than other fish. Also the fact that proper treatments of pets is definitely rewarding, and the lack of proper treatment will result with rotten pets that are hardly worth spending so much money taking care of. Honestly, cats take some expensive shits, having to have cat litter and what not. I used to be fond of cats as pets, but after seeing the ones we have in this house, they have completely lost all appeal to me now. So I'd highly recommend taking a visit to a pet store to check out some betta fish that are sitting in their cups, waiting for a new home. ... Or maybe catch a toad from outside with a laser pointer. Whichever.