The Day. The Fiiiiiiiish-y Died.

That's right. Nemo is dead. It was a good, happy seven months.
A moment of silence, please.

And let's not get into any blame games here: it is nothing more than an extremely sad and unfortunate coincidence that this happened so soon after her brother's venture into his tank.

So I had a long talk with Anna about all this. I think she got it.
I told her we loved Nemo and took care of him, but sometimes fish get sick and then they die.
I told her when things die, they can't come back anymore.
I told her we should send Nemo back to the ocean, where he belongs.

I told her we should flush him down the toilet.

She leveled her gaze at me for several seconds. I waited. I had nothing else. I kept thinking: what would Calvin's Daddy (see below) say at a time like this?

Fortunately, her mental process was evidently more focused on the likelihood that, at long last, she would finally be able to really use the little net that came with her magnetic fishing game, as opposed to any lengthy existential discovery process.

She asked me if we could use her net to get him out, I said yes, and she was thrilled.
We dumped him in the toilet, said a few kind words, and then she flushed him.

When Steve came home that night and asked her about him, her summary went like this:
He died. We put him in the toilet. Can we get another one?

Phew! Kudos to Mommy for evidently avoiding any long-term emotional scars...

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Calvin and Hobbes: best comic ever. Calvin's Daddy comes up with imaginative explanations for natural phenomena that Ptolemy would be proud of. Calvin (at 5 or 6 years) and his Dad also have some fantastic 'intellectual' exchanges. Here's one given on Wiki:

Calvin: "Dad, are you vicariously living through me in the hope that my accomplishments will validate your mediocre life and in some way compensate for all of the opportunities you botched?"

Calvin's father: "If I were, you can bet I'd be re-evaluating my strategy."

Calvin (later, to his mother): "Mom, Dad keeps insulting me."