Random Rumble

Today I saw something creepy. A fish from the tank in the living room had died. It was half-eaten and its swim bladder was out, floating on the surface as the rest of the carcass lied on the bottom. Immediately horror filled me and I was unable to touch or look at it until finally I forced myself to take it out with a net, put the body and the detached bladder in a clean tissue paper, realised that I have no idea how to warp a dead body so I just did it like a bag of candy before throwing it in the garbage (I thought of burying it, but I didn't want to pollute the local bacteria pool).

Now, I have eaten fish many times before. I have seen detached swim bladders a lot and even enjoyed eating those when I was a kid. I have seen many half-eaten fish in the plates or raw. I have seen my parents gut the fish and take out stuff with blood on them. But they were not creepy to me. They were just food. Whole food or half-eaten food or food chopped to pieces. Yet a fish that had lived with me dies, I feel all sorts of negative emotions. When the dead body was whole it was sort of alright, I felt maybe sadness and guilt and that was it. But disemboweled, half-eaten fish, of a fish that has lived with me, fill me with horror on top of these. It wasn't disgust... if disgust was there the horror had drowned it out. It was this feeling of holding something that was still whole and living a few days ago but now in incomplete pieces. Is it because I have somehow considered the fish "family", something that should be on equal standing as myself?

As for why the fish had died, it was sick for a while now. The muscles where the fins are attached to the body were red from inflammation. I knew I shouldn't use antibiotics as the bacteria from those tanks are already antibiotic-resistant from previous misuses and I didn't know any anti-inflammatory drugs for fish. It was also skeletal thin for some reason (the "silver coins" in the same tank and same activity zone are fat). I figured that maybe it didn't like the food and got it new food few days ago. It liked the new food initially, but then lost interest as well. Then it died before I could do anything else.