The Eternal Fish

Angelfish? Maybe. We aren't sure yet what exactly this fish's deal is. First, a little background... We bought a fish tank about a year ago. Got a few fish and had fun watching them until they died every few months. We can't keep plants alive. Whatever made us think we could keep fish alive I'm still not sure. Anyway, the fish came and went until finally we decided to stop buying more fish. We agreed that when they all died we would take the fish tank down and try again in ten years or so. One by one they died off until finally there was only one fish left. A bright yellow fish that I don't remember the name of. A few weeks after all the other fish had died it started swimming funny, just like the other fish did days before they were belly up. It was swimming in circles, hovering at the bottom, and struggling to make it to the top of the tank to eat. A couple weeks of this went by. Every night, when we fed it, we would talk about how it wasn't going to make it another day. And then every morning there it would be, swimming around like it was just fine. It blew our minds. And then it got worse. Not moving much at all and seeming like it was just holding on by a thread. I think it was like that for a week or two...and then out of nowhere it snapped out of it. Completely normal again. We decided it must have just been sick. (Do fish get sick?) And now for the past (going on) two months things have just been weird. It will be lying on it's side, on the bottom, not moving at all. We tap on the glass, nothing. We prepare ourselves for cleaning out the tank later that day and then we turn around and there it is, swimming around. Was it asleep? Because I thought fish didn't sleep. THIS FISH HAS NINE FREAKING LIVES! I don't know if it is a "catfish" (haha) or what but it seems to have 9 lives. I don't know how many times we are 99.9% sure it is dead and then suddenly it's not. The thing won't die. I'm not sure what it's holding on for but it is starting to freak us out. Part of me wants to get a teeny tiny bee-bee gun and put it out of it's misery. Jake has threatened to flush it numerous times but I just know that not "all drains lead to the ocean." A friend of mine owns a turtle...turtles eat fish. She has offered to take it off our hands but I just can't do that either. And so we wait. We watch and we wait and maybe someday it will die. Maybe. And when that day comes I think we will be forced to have a small funeral out of respect for it's many lives. (And maybe we should get an autopsy done, either to figure out what it's deal is or just to make sure it is actually dead.)