Skip to main content

Lalwant and Parents Who Ate Their Kids

What do you call parents who eat their own progeny?

They were busy protecting the little ones for a day, and then promptly ate them!

I’m talking about my black angelfish of course. Red eyes, black bodies, and the attitude of naughty puppies, they’re usually a laugh riot.

And if I’m not mistaken, Lalwant Singh, (the next-in-line after the dear departed Kartar Singh), is to blame!

Lalwant Singh has been doing his Betta thing, rushing at everything all fury and red fins. I’m not sure but maybe he remembers being nipped in his erstwhile home in the shop by a host of baby angelfish. (Why do they say, “memory of a fish”? Mine seem to have long, vengeful memories!) He went and spooked the first time parents, and killed my dream of tiny angel fry following their parents around the aquarium.

The next time they lay eggs, they will be shielded from Lalwant by some black film between the two aquariums.

Who said fish make boring pets?

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

22 Comments

  • Ms. Singh, thank you for welcoming me to your blog. It contains upbeat and wholesome missives. . . very refreshing! By the way, the angelfish that we caught in Grand Isle were of a salt-water variety, hence a larger breed. There is another name for them, but it escapes me at the moment . . . I’ll Google it. If you like visit my NEW blog at http://penpaltable.blogspot.com. “I’ve only just begun the fun!”

  • bronxboy55 says:

    I’ll never get past the idea of animals eating each other. Still, after reading the title of this post, I felt relieved to learn that you were talking about fish.

    • Damyanti says:

      Well, we are animals, and we eat other animals. I have not found the concept disgusting unless the killing is needless and based on greed rather than hunger. I’m trying to turn vegetarian, and eat meat only if nothing else is on the menu. Which happens very often in the country I live in.

  • I reminisce. As a child, my father brought me fishing in Grand Isle, Louisiana. We fished from an old, abandoned bridge teaming with other anglers with hopes of hooking the “big one”. On a bright summer morning, I felt the jerk on my pole and began reeling him in; to my chagrin, it was a monster angelfish. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My dad’s tank had angelfish, but not ginormous whoppers like this. After a few hours, our ice chest was brimming over with these beauties. I reasoned it out, someone must have emptied their aquarium into the gulf and look what happened . . . Ah, memories!

  • I’ve had quite a few angel fish over the years in my aquarium and have always wondered WHY they named them that. They always seem to have a mean streak a mile wide. Good luck on the next batch of eggs. I never got my baby fish to grow to adulthood, but that didn’t stop me from trying!

    -TP

    • Damyanti says:

      This is the second time my angels have done this. If I had a tank to spare I would have removed the eggs after they were fertilized….apparently most breeders do that!

  • nutschell says:

    their breed name seems to be very deceiving. ANGEL fish and they eat their young? tsk tsk.:)
    HOpe you have a great weekend!
    nutschell
    http://www.thewritingnut.com

  • Talei Loto says:

    Oh, poor fishies. I know baby sharks are cannibalistic too. Interesting circle of life, a very short one.

    • Damyanti says:

      Yep, a very short one indeed. Wonder if any other beings think of us as having a short lifespan ? Uh-oh, the writer in me is acting up again!

  • Woe is me! I am lost, floundering in a world of antiquity – a relic from the Jurassic age – a dinosaur. Can you hear me calling from the depths of this black, spiraling hole? I want out – my freedom and future is in your gracious hands – rescue me. I am a new-kid-on-the-block to blogs; I am lost. Where do I go from here – how can I be heard in this deafening silence of a digital world?

  • Pen Palatable says:

    Like a fish out of water, I am appalled at this display of aquatic abuse. My guppies were notorious at masticating their offspring. A large clump of grass gave these little tikes sanctuary from their ominous elders. Once, I even netted a perpetrator and around the bowl and down the hole he went – I showed him! Of course, the guppies were feed fish for my dad’s tropical tank . . . Oh, well! I thought that even the wee little guppettes deserved a life, too.

  • What do you call parents who eat their own progeny?
    Hungry?
    Greedy?
    Jealous?
    Overbearingly punitive?
    Testing your love?
    Or just fancied a small fry up?

  • You have a mean fish there!

  • Marian Allen says:

    Not I, to be sure! Some time, I’ll have to post about Flash, our late and lamented dojo loach.

    I don’t think Lalwant Singh is to blame for visiting the sins of the past upon the children of the current angels. The angels probably just talked to somebody who has teenagers.