(NEW YORK CITY, UPI) Funeral services were held Thursday night for well-loved Siamese fighting fish Frankenfurter Fishenheimer, who passed away earlier that day, presumably of old age.
Fishenheimer, known as "Frank" to family and friends, had resided with █████ ███████ of Manhattan for the fifteen months prior to his passage. Frank joined the household after being acquired as a door prize at the World Fantasy Awards Banquet in Providence, Rhode Island, by William Shunn.
"The little gold Tasmanian Devil wasn't even under my plate," said Shunn. "Eileen Gunn was the proper winner, but she didn't want to try to transport him home, so Frank joined our family instead."
Shunn carried the red two-and-a-half-inch fish back to New York in a plastic bag on his lap in the back seat of Greg Costikyan's car.
Frank soon found his small plastic bowl constrictive and graduated to a one-gallon glass bowl with blue gravel. He flourished in the new environment, and asserted his natural fierceness by fanning out his gills when confronted by his own mirror image.
"We thought he had died a couple of times before," said ███████, "though it turned out the water had gone cold because the windows were open and he was just sluggish."
Frank survived not only fifteen months of captivity but occasional long stretches of fasting while his caretakers were out of town. In the wild, Betta splendens sometimes lives in shallow puddles for one to two weeks without food.
The gauzily finned fish had inhabited new quarters for approximately three weeks before his demise, a three-gallon aquarium he shared with Sushi and Sashimi, two small Sunset Fire platys.
Frank was spotted lying in an awkward position against the glass of his new home, possibly not breathing, early Thursday morning by ███████.
"I phoned Bill from work to tell him I was worried about Frank, that he might be dead," she said.
When Shunn arrived that evening, Frank was indeed dead. So was Sushi, the larger of the two platys, whose lifeless body lay across Frank's.
"You gave us many hours of pleasure, Frank, watching you swim around in your bowl and attack your food," said ███████, officiating at the funeral service. "You were almost like part of the family. You were part of the family. We're going to miss you."
Turning to Sushi, she said, "We didn't get to know you very well, but we'll miss you too."
The two fish were then interred in the toilet, which Shunn flushed, moist-eyed. "Bye, Frankenfish," he said.
Frank is survived by roommate Sashimi, and by caretakers ███████ and Shunn. No living relatives are known.
