--- title: Watch Boy Flushing His Beloved Pet Fish: Viral Video description: When Pierce Griffin's pet betta fish Cupid passed away, he wasn't ready to let go—and his mom posted his emotional response to Facebook. canonical: https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-19T17:59:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:40:17.368Z og:title: Watch This Little Boy Tearfully Mourn His Beloved Pet Fish og:description: The end had come for fish Cupid, but this boy was not ready to say goodbye. og:url: https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch This Little Boy Tearfully Mourn His Beloved Pet Fish twitter:description: The end had come for fish Cupid, but this boy was not ready to say goodbye. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # This Adorable Little Boy Reluctantly Flushing His Pet Fish Is Truly Poetic  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jan 19, 2017 5:59 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jan 19, 2017 5:59 PM UTC Fish are friends, too. At least, they are for this young boy, Pierce Griffin, who was clearly very attached to his blue Betta fish named Cupid. In a video posted by his mother, Dee Griffin, to Facebook, five-year-old Pierce is clearly devastated by the untimely [death of the marine creature](http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/?iid=sr-link2) while his mom encourages him to let go and flush the fish’s corpse down the toilet. “Thank you God for the fish, but I don’t want to!” he says; according to Dee’s Facebook posting, he had lasted as a pet for about a month. At Pierce’s last words, “Bye-bye Cupid,” the truth of mortality and loss hits him and he collapses into wails. He holds onto hope until the last second—”I see him moving!”—but eventually succumbs to the morbid reality and dumps his beloved Betta into the porcelain bowl, never to be seen again. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, water to water,” intones his mom rather poetically as the fish swirls away into the sewer. Better luck next time, both to Cupid and Pierce. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/"},"headline":"This Adorable Little Boy Reluctantly Flushing His Pet Fish Is Truly Poetic","datePublished":"2017-01-19T17:59:02.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:40:17.368Z","description":"\"Bye-bye, Cupid...\"","url":"https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/","keywords":["Newsfeed","animals","viral"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4639412/boy-mourns-fish/","name":"This Adorable Little Boy Reluctantly Flushing His Pet Fish Is Truly Poetic"}}]}] ```