A tiny fish recently got a big funeral -- an elaborate Viking send-off, complete with wooden ship and burning pyre.
Laura Psutka’s pet fish was truly loved.
“He really became a member of the family, as weird as that is to say about a fish,” said the 24-year-old paramedic from Ontario, Canada. “He was a great companion, always just hanging out.”
The fish’s moniker was Peeping Tom, so named because of his life’s vocation.
“He lived in my bathroom,” Psutka said. “Livin' his life watching people poop and shower.”
Psutka had such an affection for Tom that she decided to give him an “epic” funeral should he die while in her care.
“It was a long-standing joke that he would live forever because he was so hearty and a valiant little creature,” she told HuffPost over email. “So I decided a few years back that when he died he'd be getting the most epic send-off I could think of.”
Tom recently crossed the rainbow bridge after Psutka’s dad mistakenly moved his fish bowl to a shady part of the house “despite specific instructions to keep his bowl in light.”
“I came home from work the next day to find my wonderful aquatic companion dead,” Psutka wrote on Imgur.
Psutka later said that light probably “didn't actually have anything to do” with Tom’s death. “It was just his advanced age.”
Still, her dad felt terrible about the creature’s sudden demise, and wanted to do something to make up for it. So he and Psutka prepared a Viking funeral for her fishy friend.
“What's more hearty and valiant than a Viking?” she said.
“My dad is a really handy guy who loves projects and loves building stuff so that night I told him I wanted the most fish-Viking worthy vessel he could make! And sure enough he emerged from the basement with a balsa wood boat complete with sail and troll masthead,” she said. “The two of us built the platform and cover of matches and performed a flotation test to make sure it all checked out.”
The ship was named SS Boobies “because Tom loved titties, one of the reasons he lived so long, just to watch people shower,” Psutka wrote on Imgur.
The following day, Psutka and her dad went over to her sister's place for Tom's final farewell.
“We live in the city but my sister lives in a new development in the country where there's drainage ditches that lead nowhere,” she said. “I figured that was a safe place to send Tom to Valhalla.”
When the time came, Psutka put Tom “on his little platform, cued up some epic music and lit the boat.”
“Honestly I did feel sad Tom was gone but I knew he would've liked his send off,” she said.
Farewell, valiant Tom. Farewell.
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