Another one of these from Seattle, '98. I was quite surprised to see this song in the set. It was not often performed, that I recall, by any line-up. (Maybe it was a request that we tried to "wing" -- there's some chord flubs in the bridge, not that that proves much as there are almost always a few of those.) Anyway, I do remember having the sense, at the time, that songs such as this from the 1992 Milk Milk Lemonade album were ancient, obscure artifacts that could be excavated from time to time as kind of stunt. Six years is a long time at any given point, perhaps, but nearly twenty years on from that point it all seems like everything is pretty much of a piece.
As for the song itself, it's a rather lazy attempt at an extended metaphor (the romantic object as terrarium pet) that goes off not fully "cocked", so to speak, like many songs of its era. Songwriting negligence of this kind always embarrasses me a little still, even as I recognize that such half-cockedness and the resulting blurred correspondences and off-kilter focus can be the most interesting thing about them, hardly achievable on purpose should that be a thing you'd ever want to do. I know this song is beloved by many, whatever the case. Maybe it's all in that riff, which, though I say it myself, would rule per se, whatever it was used for or in.