"Zi Sha" or "Dang Zai"?

As the current pond (left) was getting too tiny for the fishes that had grown tenfold in 2 years, our contractor, Vic, had my dad convinced that they needed an upgrade. So here's their new home (right) - 3 times the size of the old one and complete with a water feature.

Unfortunately, on the first day of relocation, one of the fishes decided to do a splash. This particular one was always splashing about anyways. Only this time, it splashed right out of the water and onto the porch. We found it the next morning, on a blood-smeared porch, already dead. Stupid as it may seem, my first thought was "Fish got blood one meh?" Then I thought back to my biology lesssons, and yes la, fish got blood. It's just that to me, they're a bit like lizards and frogs - just filled with slime. (Do frogs and lizards have blood???)

Anyway, as I'm not exactly a fish lover, I thought the whole thing quite funny. Until Cooking Girl and RT mentioned that when fishes do that, it is actually to 'dang zai'. Meaning they die to prevent a tragedy happening in the family, taking the place of the person unto whom the tragedy would strike. Awww. How sweet. No longer funny. I've heard that about guinea pigs too, actually. RT's story was quite scary, in the scary-coincidental sense. So perhaps, there is some truth in the 'dang zai' theory.

Since the fishes' upgraded home now looked too big for the few of them, we decided to buy a few more koi. Mum said that we should get a black one, cos someone had mentioned before that having at least one would bring luck. So we went to the fish shop and bought a black one for luck, and a yellow golden one, in replacement of the one that died.



It was then that I learnt of another theory as to why the fish might have jumped out of the pond. I was trying to convince mum, who was deadset against it cos it was 'geeli', to buy an albino mudsucker as it was quite unique. Most mudsuckers are black. That's when the shopkeeper said: "If your pond is new, not so much algae yet, one mudsucker enough. If you have too many, sometimes not enough algae, the mudsucker will suck the koi. That's why sometimes the koi jump."

There you go. Another theory as to why my koi jumped.

I personally believe it had to do with the water level that was too high.

Whilst taking some pics of the fishes' upgraded home, I took some pics of my doggies enjoying their milk bones. They shared one with Bobby, my neighbour's black labrador.



Cute hor? I sure hope dogs don't practise "dang zai".