Material Girl | With pets in high demand, think goldfish or hens

She sleeps in the hen house but wanders up when she gets peckish, so-to-speak.

If I'm a bit slow out of the blocks she gets in a flap and makes a low-level, cranky-cluck.

"Love-a-duck!" I say (or something similar), when it's still dark outside.

"Can you pipe down; you'll wake the whole street!!"

Usually, however, Rosie waits patiently on the doormat, like a loyal sheepdog.

She's the closest thing we've got to a pet still going strong in this whole global pandemic.

Therefore, when my youngest recently asked me over coffee out in Albury for a few fish for our backyard pond I agreed without giving it a second thought.

Enough time had past since we lost our last goldfish.

I'm almost over the Great Turtle Escape I, II and III. Almost.

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We rocked up to the pet shop with three names, in need of some fancy fish to go with them.

Kiwi. Cherry. Topaz.

My daughter picked out some exotic, tropical fish - kind of Lady Gaga in fish form - before I steered her towards the cold water tanks.

I was surprised by the number of people waiting patiently to pick out fish.

When it came down to the last two groups, the woman ahead of let us go first as she needed to pH test a water sample.

That had not even occurred to me.

Even so, we dived right in and selected three fancy fish.

Black. Orange. Orange and white. Garden-variety fish; no diva bits and bobs.

When I asked the staffer how the trio would go settling into an outdoor pond in mid-May, she said they should be fine but that there were no guarantees.

We bought fish food and headed home, hopeful.

My husband suggested the fish should not go directly into the pond, placing the bag in the water to let them adjust to the temperature and bob around their new digs for a while.

Fun fact: How long do fish last in a bag? is not the most popular Google search.

People want to know how long do fish last in the fridge, freezer, cryovac, once defrosted, after thawing, in the fridge after thawed, in the fridge after you catch it, on ice and in the fridge after cooking.

However, fish typically last seven to nine hours in a bag unless the pet shop added extra oxygen.

We decided to release them before we headed out to dinner that night.

When they barrel-rolled out of the bag like synchronised swimmers and immediately sank to the bottom of the pond, my husband and me were like Boris handling the pandemic in Britain in the early days: Alert and alarmed but not letting on.

"It's a bit of a shock for them," I say.

"They're probably going to sleep it off; I'd go into a self-induced coma if I was plunged into an ice bath in the middle of May!"

The next morning we were up early to deal with the situation.

Surprisingly, the fish were not floating on the top of the pond and had moved off the bottom.

The water pH was well within range.

The pump was doing whatever pumps are meant to do in ponds.

The water plants were still going strong, giving the fish somewhere to shelter.

Eventually they got used to us hanging around and didn't hide away nearly as much.

They turned out to be a reasonable, low-maintenance pet choice; less fuss than even the ageing, early-rising hen.

Then I read the back of the fish food.

"Only feed as much as your fish can consume in approximately three minutes. Uneaten food should be removed from the pond."

In a house full of grazers, nothing would have survived under those conditions.

Animals or humans.

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