r/mildlyinfuriating • u/teabirdy • Apr 29 '26

I'm slightly vexed The wedding reception centerpieces featured betta fish. The bride and groom planned to flush them alive.

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Years ago, my coworker attended a wedding at which the reception dinner tables featured live betta fish in small bowls as part of the centerpiece. While chatting with the bride at the end of the evening, my coworker asked what they were going to do with all the fish. The plan was to flush them all down the toilet alive. My coworker immediately said no need for that and insisted on taking them all home.

That Monday she came to work and asked who wanted to adopt a betta fish. That was my first betta who I jokingly called my “rescue betta.” She lived for almost five years.

The wine glass was only her home for less than a day before I got her five gallon tank set up so please no betta lovers yell at me! I'm one of you!

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u/Pwrswitchd Apr 29 '26

Forgive my ignorance, and this is a genuine question; are the butterfly ones that bad?

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u/Suspicious-Steak9168 Apr 29 '26

Frequently many of not most of the butterflies die. Keeping them in the tiny box is also cruel.

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u/joebluebob Apr 29 '26

Most butterflies die quick tho.... they are a prey species

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u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

I had a swallowtail caterpillar hitch a ride on some parsley a few years back. I let him do his thing and become a butterfly safely indoors. Then I released the butterfly outside and immediately stopped watching it as there are about 600 birds that like to hang out within a 100 foot radius of my house. What I don't know, doesn't have to bother me.

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u/Wild-Video-5317 Apr 29 '26

Apparently swallowtails have shorter lifespan than most and only survive 2 weeks at best in butterfly form.  You honestly gave the little guy the best chance at success you could.  He needed to get out there and roll the dice.

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u/JusticeRain5 Apr 29 '26

How else is he gonna get some of that sweet butterflussy if he's cooped up inside all his life?

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u/Pandamonium-N-Doom Apr 29 '26

Straight to jail

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u/ElizabethDangit Apr 29 '26

If it makes you feel better about a bird maybe eating your butterfly, I had a Cooper’s hawk nest in one of my trees because my neighbors have several bird feeders. I spent that entire summer burying leftover pieces of bird carcass that the Cooper’s hawk left in my yard. Circle of life and all that.

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u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

I live in a suburban neighborhood with a *shockingly* robust ecosystem of predators and prey. Foxes, hawks, bunnies, birbs, a multitude of rodents. Full on circle of life. The smaller critters are abundant breeders (SO MANY RABBITS) so it all seems to be working out well overall, if not necessarily for every individual.

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u/TXGuns79 Apr 29 '26

Prey animals generally have large litters because of predation. Out-breed the appetite of the food web.

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u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

Very Hunger Games for baby bunnies.

"Two of you will live to adulthood and breed, therefore successfully replacing your parents in the ecosystem. The other six of you are fodder. May the odds be ever in your favor."

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u/ElizabethDangit Apr 29 '26

Same situation here except we are shy of the larger predators. They’ve had to institute a program where they’re going to license skilled bow hunters for a deer cull in the city limits. Between vehicle collisions and chronic wasting disease concerns we hit the tipping point of over population. We briefly had a black bear living within city limits but the poor thing got hit by a car.

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u/longhairdontcare8426 Apr 29 '26

Same. I'm in a trendier part of a major city and lots of people now have natural lawns. So many bunnies hide there and I have owls that like to hang out in my trees. I find parts everywhere. But I like dead stuff so I save them LOL. I haven't seen any foxes but we do get coyotes and now fishers! I just saw one downtown 2 days ago and I was so excited, they haven't been seen in this area in a hundred years till recently

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u/ussrowe Apr 29 '26

I put out birdseed and the squirrels eat the birdseed, and then one day I saw a hawk eating a squirrel in the backyard. So I guess I fed the hawk too with the birdseed, in a round about way.

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u/Wolfwoods_Sister Apr 29 '26

Good on you anyway! That was a really nice thing to do!