Beta Mum's Blog Beta Mum on 04 Jul 2007 09:44 am
Consider a Sea Monkey
Sea Monkeys – what are they for?
Every day Hannah carefully aerates hers.
This involves pouring the contents of the little plastic container into a jug and back again, three times. This, it says on the packet, will give them plenty of oxygen with which to sustain their very uninteresting lives.
Every day she looks at the water, and seems to see the sea monkeys happily living their lives. When I peer into the greenish gloom, all I see are bits of floating detritus, and powdery food that she keeps lobbing in.
It may be because I’m over 35. It says on the packaging that aged people such as myself will not be able to see the sea monkey eggs without the aid of a magnifying glass.
Of course the magnifying glass that had been kicking around the kitchen for weeks suddenly disappeared, so I couldn’t see anything except water.
I think this little bit of information may be a clever ploy to fool parents into thinking there is actually something in there worth feeding.
The creatures were a present, and when we got them Hannah was very excited and enjoyed the initial process of pouring water, adding sachets of powder, and hoping the specks she’d seen in the water were sea monkey eggs and not stray nits.
She’s showing remarkable persistence in continuing to care for these unrewarding flecks of nothing, but I’m beginning to think our care regime may not have been up to the job.
I see no signs of this -
Even though they start out so small, Sea-Monkeys grow up to be between 1/2 to 3/4 an inch in length during a 4 week period.
At this stage, they’ll start to reproduce and have more adorable babies.
I see no 3/4 inch long prehistoric-looking skeletons, and no babies, adorable or otherwise.
Shall we give up?
Or is there something we can do to re-invigorate this plastic container full of murky water?
on 04 Jul 2007 at 10:53 am 1.rilly super said …
sounds more like can’t-sea monkeys to me.
on 04 Jul 2007 at 1:00 pm 2.Mopsa said …
Kids toys get more bizarre by the year - what was all that tamagotchi stuff about?
on 04 Jul 2007 at 8:58 pm 3.dulwichmum said …
I shall tell you what you can do, what I am planning to do to these vile creatures very soon indeed - a dash of bleach into the mix!
No, no I wouldn’t do it, but they are spoiling the line of my kitchen cabinets and they make the place look dirty!
DM
on 04 Jul 2007 at 10:43 pm 4.brom said …
I work with things that I’ve never seen, and probably never will do. They still pay the bills though.
on 05 Jul 2007 at 12:02 am 5.Mother at Large said …
If Hannah’s enjoying them so much, seems a shame to dispose of them. Maybe the adorable babies are just taking their time in appearing.
on 05 Jul 2007 at 9:03 am 6.Beta Mum said …
RS - very good! I certainly can’t see them and I doubt Hannah can.
Mopsa - tamagotchis passed us by. I try to steer them clear of TV with adverts.
DM - you can’t rella ynotice our little plastic tub of guck, as it’s on the window sill overshadowed by much bigger piles of crud
Brom - if we could get the things/nothings to pay their way, that’d be much more acceptable
MatL - I’m happy for her to aerate a container full of murky water if she enjoys it. But is there anything in it? That’s what I want to know. It must be the scientist in me struggling to get out after all those years buried beneath an arts bias.
on 05 Jul 2007 at 3:59 pm 7.Lucy Diamond said …
We had some of the buggers too…until I managed to knock them off the windowsill. Eeek. After all that nagging the kids too, “Be careful! Stop picking up the tank!”
Bad mummy. Evil, sea-monkey-murdering mummy!
on 06 Jul 2007 at 2:38 pm 8.Elliott Reid said …
Sea Monkeys are so cute!
on 08 Jul 2007 at 7:13 am 9.dulwichmum said …
Dear Elliot Reid,
Just post your address and I can pop around to you with ours. No really…
on 18 Jul 2007 at 6:20 pm 10.Penny in Amsterdam said …
Well, Wikipaedia certainly seems to think sea monkeys (”sea-monkey”) exist, and seem to sum up the state of their art.
They’re a patented species. The design of an animal for sale. But the site makes strange statements, such as “Brine shrimp originate in salt lakes and salt evaporation flats.” Let’s hope they don’t mean spontaneous generation. That could easily queer their sales pitch.