We’d been talking about getting a pet, and then the Sea Monkeys arrived in the mail, a Christmas gift. The kids were very interested for all of 11.9 seconds, before ripping into their other toys. But as we set up our new Sea Monkey Aquarium, all eyes were on the tiny specks of dark.
“When will they change, Mom?” the kids asked, until the day we saw a sort of moving question mark, boinging around in the cage, and then two. The kids would check daily, peering into the microscope. I moved them to the windowsill where we could all get a better look.
That’s where the love affair ended. They got bigger, and bigger, and we fed them gobs of green muck until they were like little frilly moustaches with eyeballs, trilling about. One day, in a random spurt of cleanliness, I swept all the kitchen paper scraps into the recycling. A nagging feeling told me I had just thrown their food away. I decide I am okay with that. They surely can’t live very long, right?
I confessed to a friend my thoughtless act.
‘I want them to die already, because they are staring at me when I do the dishes,” I said.
She laughed and told me not to hold my breath.
“We moved, and two months later as we walked by, they were still on the windowsill. We walked over out of morbid curiosity and they were like little monsters,” she stated.
“No food for two months? And they still grew?” I inhaled, horrified.
“Yup,” she answered, confirming the worst. “You’re going to have to kill them yourself.”
I start to think about it all the time, mostly because I do a lot of dishes. I have named a few of them. Harry has a massive set of balls and spends the day chasing the other shrimp. I have no idea what this means but it disturbs me deeply. Brainy floats in the middle, staring at me. I can feel it.
Weeks go by, but I can’t bring myself to end it. The kids have long since lost interest. I look over to see Brainy giving me a pleading look.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask aloud, realizing I have become quite mental about this. Brainy stares. Yes. I think back to one of David Lynch’s first movies, Dune. The all-knowing, supreme sentient being was this big boogery-thing floating in a fancy glass jar. It looked a lot like Brainy.
I stare back into the black eyes and realize what he’s been trying to tell me. I dump the aquarium into the sink before I can think about it and flush the water, run it awhile, and chuck the green cage away. There you go Brainy, you are free.
I decide that brine shrimp are lame pets. We are getting a cat. for some new pets! Or, maybe not.