Wife’s 8 year old very large goldfish was passing away. Had dropsy, was suffering, and was on the verge of death. Wife and I looked into the symptoms and there was practically no hope of him making a recovery, so she asked me to euthanize him. Looking into methods, it seemed pretty agreed upon that the most effective and quick way to euthanize a fish was blunt force trauma.

Now, when I was a kid my family were huge anglers, and I was designated as the fish killer when it was time to cook them. Back then, I was told to slam them on the ground as hard as I could. Well, my 8 year old body wasnt strong enough to kill them instantaneously so I had to do it multiple times. Honestly it kind of fucked me up a little.

Flash forward to last night, I didn’t want that happening again and I wanted it to be painless. I asked my wife to leave the room because she was very upset and I chose to do the deed by putting the fish in a plastic grocery bag and slamming it on the counter as hard as I possibly could.

The poor fish was absolutely obliterated. The force ripped open the bag and sprayed bits of what used to be a goldfish in every direction. Told my wife to stay upstairs and she started getting suspicious so she comes down after 5 minutes and its just everywhere still. On the counter, on the stove, on the fridge, on the freaking Christmas tree we still have up, I was still finding pieces of it this morning. Wife was aghast and traumatized. Cried until she went to bed.

TL;DR I euthanized my wife’s dying fish quickly but in the most visually traumatizing way possible.