Welome to Aquatic Babble! I wanted to make a site about freshwater fish where people can get answers to their questions. The quote under the title on the main page was by my friend, Silent Doh, who was the second member to register on this site (I was the first ). I started this thread so people can introduce themselves. I'll start: My name is Bettina. I currently own a 50 gallon aquarium with several species of fish and a approx. 40 gallon barrel with 2 comet goldfish (my first 2 fish). I have kept fish for about 2 years. Other than fish I have, 5 hermit crabs, 2 cats, 1 cockatiel, 1 dog, 7 guinea fowl, and 8 chickens.

I'm from a rural sort of area. Some may say 'the country'. We didn't have Crabs, just Crayfish and Yabbies, but we ate those. But now that I think back, I have a vague childhood memory of a blue crab walking across the loungeroom floor and into fire. We had plenty of Cats, I remember having to put a couple down. Another was poisoned. One was clean shaven by the radiator fan when we started the car up. That was a laugh. One was bit by a snake. One had half it's face torn off. Another was cooked, but I won't go into that. I don't know about Cockatiel's, but I did shoot a Cockatoo once, the nice Sulpher Crested one, not the blacky. There was an Emu around for a bit, but it was Emu-napped one day when we weren't home. Dog's we had. I think I put one down. Almost put a bullet through another, but he wasn't as bad off as was thought, just two broken legs and a broken jaw. Although there was one who was shot at least three times. Another fell off the tractor and went under the mulcher. Two were run over. I ran over 2 more, but they weren't our's. Lucky! Another had its stomach burnt out with a phosphorous bait. No Guinea Fowls, but I did have a Bantam, at least up until the Dog ate it. Plenty of Chickens. At four years old, I had to gut and clean them after my Dad cut thier heads off with the axe. The Pig ate something and died. My Turtle was eaten by the Cat. I now have two fish tanks. Sometimes I flush fish down the dunny. I have two children, they don't fit down the dunny (not any more). And it's not legal to lease them out to science. My pet rock is still doing ok tho'...

I'm sorry, this isn't entirely true...I've never had a pet rock.

Interesting (and funny) story. A lot of death but it made me laugh. I wasn't reallly laughing at the animals dying, but more at what happened to them.

Yeah - fun on the farm...

My kids were looking over my shoulder when I wrote that. They didn't know wether to laugh or cringe. But they were asking me questions, and that just made me remember more.

There were many more zoological companions that didn't get a mention. And there was probably more than a few times when us kids nearly joined those that did! Like when I fell in the Sheep Dip, or my sister being trampled by an escapee from the Shearing Shed.