Finding Snowy

So, my husband and I had the bright idea to buy fish for our animal lover daughter Christina for Christmas. Last night we were putting our kids to bed and the girls kept saying that Snowy, the white guppie, was "hiding." We both looked in the tank and Snowy was nowhere to be found, so Mark starts to distract the girls why I look for the missing fish. Finally I looked in the filter and there she lay (she is a girl, of course). I start motioning to Mark to keep the kids distracted, but being a man, he has to see the scene of the accident. As the girls are happily reading books and getting dressed, we are signing and mouthing words to each other vigorously. I wanted to hide it and Mark is convinced that the fish is fine and just needs to breathe fresh water in the tank. Finally, as we are mouthing back in forth to each other, Mark grabs the fish and sticks it back in the tank. Snowy's lifeless body floats to the bottom of the tank-as dead as dead can be-and lands in a bush. At this point, I stare in horror and start flailing my arms as to say What in the world are we going to do now? Mark shrugs his shoulders and at this point our son Micah, who is 3 years old, points to the fish and starts saying, "Fishy sleeping!" Mark runs out of the room to grab a pair of pliers because we can't reach the fish and the girls look at the tank, horrified. Elena, our 8 year old, starts to fight back tears. Mark finally returns with the pliers and pulls the fish out. As its lifeless body lays in Mark's hands, Elena is on the edge of tears and Micah keeps trying to grab it because he wants to play with it. Mark starts telling the kids something about this being a life lesson and he wants to give the fish a watery funeral. Then he tries to lighten the mood by saying that Snowy did a Nemo. (Remember in Finding Nemo when Nemo swims up the filter to turn it off? Well, Nemo lived and Snowy didn't--as my daughter pointed out.) As we turned the lights off for bed, the girls are just staring at the tank, still looking horrified. I guess we're going back to the fish store.