Before the November of two thousand and eight,

I was an avid fish-keeper, parents and I lived in the midst of tanks,

And then I got married, and wife took the place of my fish,

Although she couldn't be kept in glass boxes covered by planks.

And one by one the tanks went away,

And fish keeping went from hobby to ritual to chore,

And so it remained for almost a decade,

When even a small water change made me feel sore.

Cleaning became my fixed second nightmare, 

The proverbial mountain that was truly a mole-hill,

I knew I wasn't game anymore for glass and hose,

To be fair to the fish, I swallowed the quitter's bitter pill.

Ten years and two kids into this lease of life,

I felt one day I had to rekindle an old flame,

Not one that would drag me to the court of law,

But into an aquarium instead, for that I was game.

And so I setup a tank with child-like glee,

And went through a re-entrant's cycle of pain,

And just when it appeared that it was all set,

The betta refused to eat, and I was on square one again.

I don't want the betta food, it spat out pellet after pellet,

And my store didn't have any blood worms in stock,

I watched in despair as my fighter swam around without a care,

It's fast unto death would certainly serve, my boat, to rock.

It is then that I noticed that he suddenly wiggled and flared,

At the sight of few innocuous garden ants outside his home,

In an instant I dropped one into the tank and it disappeared,

Into his belly, that soon with ants bulged like a dome.

And until I finally managed to get a box of blood worms,

I dug out and fed my betta a daily serving of ten or twelve ants,

A meal I spun-off from an ant hill so my fish won't die,

For he or his likes won't eat rice or croissants.