Or, now that I think about it, any humans for that matter.
My initiation into the world of "trained human" began in April four years ago at the yearly NEC Convention. It was auction day. I'd sat through hours waiting for the fish I wanted to come up on the auction block, and successfully resisted any spur of the moment buys. We won't talk about my husband though, he no longer is "allowed" to possess a bidder card! But I digress.
About mid-afternoon, a Blue Eye Pleco came up for auction. My friend sitting next to me pushed me to bid on the first one. I declined. "No," I said, "it's not on my list. Besides where would I keep him?" I'd won the discussion, or so I thought.
The second of the two Blue Eyes came up and again she insisted I get him. "OH!! You MUST get him he's totally cool," Ann says trying her darndest to convince me. Finally, she took matters into her own hands. Literally. She raised MY bidder card to force me into the action. Well, never one to back down from a challenge I continued to bid on him, and to my surprise, won.
We decided to name him Hoover after tossing out such names as "Blue Eyes", Kirby, and Eureka. Are you sensing a theme here? Decided where to house him, in with the oscars. I thought he would be a nice quiet fish that really didn't "do" much of anything. Wrong! You wouldn't think a pleco can be a character, but he sure is! "His Nibs" is constantly training me to get what he wants. Life as I knew it was about to change, for instance:
 Trick #1: Trained his human to rub his head.
He likes having his head rubbed and his reaction is not unlike that of a cat raising its tail when you rub its back, only he raises his dorsal fin. When he's had enough attention, he wanders away.
Trick #2: Trained his human to feed him brine shrimp from an eyedropper.
This is by far my best trick. If you ask me, I'd say we're ready for prime time on Letterman's "Stupid Pet/Human Tricks." Wouldn't you agree?
I used to squirt the shrimp close to the side of his mouth. Only some would get sucked in because of the current his breathing process makes. I persisted in gently nudging his mouth with the eyedropper hoping that eventually he would get the message.
Recently I had said to a fellow fish friend, who was there watching Hoover haphazardly sucking in brine shrimp, that he would probably never learn to eat FROM it. He must understand English because the very next day he hopped onto that dropper and gave it all he had. I swear he knew how to do it all along, but did it just to call me a liar!
Trick #3: Trained his human in the finer points of decorating.
Hoover is also quite the interior decorator. He is a little frustrated with my lack of progress on this decorating issue though.
Case in point. Over the years I have rearranged his tank in a fashion that I thought would be pleasing to him. Every day the PVC "cave" and driftwood would migrate. Again. Thinking I hadn't gotten it right, each day I'd try to find a location that wasn't in "His Nibs" way.
Several months ago, his frustration with my lack of progress on the decorating issue reached it's zenith. Hoover, for the umpteenth time, had to rearrange his tank because his pupil didn't seem to understand. It was so noisy we thought we had red squirrels in our attic. We were sure it was squirrels since some of our neighbors were under seige from the cute, but destructive, little rodents. We called a critter control company who came out to the house and inspected for signs of squirrels. "Nope, no squirrels Ma'am." I insisted I heard pitter-patter at night. They insisted there were no squirrels.
After a few weeks of this, my husband was determined to get to the bottom of it. He sat in the third floor fishroom in the pitch dark, with flashlight in hand. Waiting. And waiting. Finally, at 2 AM there were noises! AH HA! Flipping on the flashlight, he started to walk into the attic but he noticed the noises were not IN the attic, but were in the room. Hoover was "redecorating" his "apartment."
The next day I called the critter control company to eat some crow. "You were right, it wasn't the squirrels. It was my pet pleco." went part of the conversation. The next part of the discussion involved a good amount of laughing. Between the laughter they asked, "Your WHAT is making the noises?!?!" "Fish," I said meekly. "My pet pleco Hoover." I'll bet they're still laughing.
I wonder what trick he'll train me to do next. |
