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Sea-Monkeys in the Media Alert: Yesterday I was reading the Web site of my favorite columnist, James Lileks, and he mentioned having Sea-Monkeys! It was the ‘Daily Bleat’ at www.lileks.com (a site well worth checking out under any circumstances – especially the “Institute of Official Cheer” section). Apparently it’s a tradition in Mr. Lileks’ neighborhood to put out a jack o’lantern for each family member. He said he was tempted to put 50 small pumpkins on the front porch and if anyone asked he’d say they were for the Sea-Monkeys. Obviously he is a man of taste and distinction.

Sadly I have nowhere near 50 Sea-Monkeys myself. The twilight of the Sea-Monkeys is at hand. The adults in the tank now number only three: two females and one male. The other female disappeared overnight this week. I haven’t been able to spot her corpse among the undersea peaks and valleys in the Ocean-Zoo, so I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that she was abducted by aliens.

In the name of science, I am definitely planning to “resurrect” the Sea-Monkey colony when the remaining creatures die off. I have already placed my order for water purifier with the TranScience Corporation in preparation.

The hard decision will be: what about the Sea-Monkey reports? You are all now intimately familiar with the life cycle of Artemia Nyos. Shall we start over and see if anything changes? Should I try something different, like starting two tanks at the same time and comparing the new with the old? Perhaps I should just get an ant farm and begin a new series. Reader suggestions are welcome!

I’m sure it won’t come as too much of a surprise that there is only one male Sea-Monkey left. He has a harem of three females, and I’m sure he’s enjoying his “last man left on earth” status. At least until the exertion kills him.

When I came in this morning I observed that the Ocean-Zoo was very chilly after sitting in the windowsill all night. It doesn’t seem to bother the adults, but I only see one baby in there now. I think the fall/winter plan will be to return the Sea-Monkeys to my desktop, at least at night. I don’t want to come in one day and find little shrimpsicles frozen to the sides of the tank. “Think of the children,” that’s my new motto.

The Official Sea-Monkey Handbook says that Sea-Monkeys can “adapt to cooler climates such as found in Northern Europe and Canada.” Aside from the fact that this seems to imply that people in Northern Europe and Canada never heat their houses when it’s cold, it does serve to allay some of my worries.

The miracle of Sea-Monkey Instant Life is that if all the tank denizens die off, I can let all the water evaporate, get another package of Water Purifier, and stir in fresh water. Apparently the scum at the bottom of the tank is just chock-full of Sea-Monkey eggs in “suspended animation” (I won’t quibble about the “suspended” part, but “animation”?).

Anyway, these eggs will only hatch after a second or third round of dehydration. The Handbook goes into a creepy riff about bringing your dead Sea-Monkeys back to life, which is a) not accurate, and b) conjures up images of “Night of the Living Dead Sea-Monkeys.” This pales in comparison to the description of “Necroovoviviparity,” which you Latin scholars can guess means eggs hatching within the bodies of dead Sea-Monkey mothers. Eeeeww!

So that’s this week’s news on the crustacean front. Try not to lose any sleep over it!

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

My worst fear was realized! The day after I reported to you my worry about an ant dying in the Sea-Monkey tank – it happened. Fortunately Part II of my worst-case scenario did not come to pass. The drowning of the ant did not appear to have any effect on the tank’s inhabitants. Whew.

The other threat, bug poison, was not a factor either. The exterminator guy managed to confine his death-dealing to the non-aquatic insects in the building, so the Sea-Monkeys were unaffected. I moved them away from the windowsill for the duration of the spraying, just in case.

The exterminator paused to relate an amusing story about a woman in a million dollar mansion who expected him to rid her of a serious mouse infestation without killing any of the rodents. “I’m an exterminator,” he told her. “I haven’t perfected my piping skills well enough to lead them down the road out of town,” is what he says he wishes he’d said.

So, back to the Sea-Monkeys. I still have the three females and two males. The good news is on the Generation B front. The babies in the tank appear to be maturing a bit beyond the little perishable specks that have come and gone since Generation A first began to get randy. There are quite a few young ‘uns in the tank that are visible from a distance, so I’m hoping that a new group will grow up by the time the rest of the old fogies kick the bucket.

I had almost forgotten how cute the babies are, swimming around in jerky little spirals. They haven’t reached the more graceful stage with all the waving, translucent…whoa! Big Sea-Monkey fight!!! I was gazing at them for inspiration when all of a sudden the largest male attacked the other male in the midst of mating. He is hassling the pair relentlessly. Meanwhile, two apparently undesirable females are going about their business unhindered and un-lusted for. Sea-Monkeys have all the social sophistication of a biker gang.

Suddenly, the high male Sea-Monkey mortality rate doesn’t seem like such a mystery. Cool the testosterone, boys!

Special same-day Sea-Monkey update:

Mr. Sore Loser Sea-Monkey has swallowed his pride and is now busily engaged in invertebrate intercourse with one of the previously rejected females. Classy, dude.

Well! My casual threat last week to consign the Sea-Monkeys to the local sewer system met with more outrage than I could have imagined. Of course I was kidding. That’s the best thing about godlike powers over the lives of others: you don’t have to exercise them to appreciate them.

Even without any malign influence from me, my Sea-Monkey population continues to dwindle. I am down to three females and two males. There are still a few babies clinging valiantly to life, but I try not to get my hopes up about them anymore. I put some more Sea-Monkey Medicine in the tank this week but, as you know, I have little faith in it.

There is a new threat to the blissful Ocean-Zoo community this week: a swarm of carpenter ants. Every afternoon hundreds of winged ants find their way in around the window frame and seethe over every inch of my windowsill. My great fear is that one will get into the tank through one of the ventilation holes and drown in the water, poisoning the Sea-Monkeys with formic acid in the process. Keep in mind that I also have a persistent fear that one day I will be ironing and drop the iron on my bare foot. It’s never happened, but you never know…

Anyway, the cure to the ant problem is to bring in an exterminator, but I’m not sure what effect bug poison will have on the Sea-Monkeys, who are bug-like in the extreme. I may have to take them on a little field trip outside the office when the bug man comes. I hesitate to take them home, though, since at least one of my cats enjoys tipping over anything filled with water. I don’t want her to have a nice shrimp-flavored beverage at my Sea-Monkeys’ expense.

So that’s the drama-filled life of my Sea-Monkeys this week. Right now they are doing the Sea-Monkey Somersaults of Joy, no doubt to thank all of you for your continued interest in their interchangeable well-being.

My Sea-Monkey population is slowly dwindling. There are now five females, two males, and a few hard-to-spot babies. One male expired over the weekend. If I were a Sea-Monkey male, I’d be very, very concerned.

However, when you have a brain that can be measured in molecules, worry is not a concept that comes into play. But if worry is an alien concept to the Sea-Monkey, irritation is not. There’s a pattern of behavior emerging wherein single Sea-Monkeys will deliberately bump into mating pairs. This sets off a spasm of violent, annoyed “get the Hell away from us” wriggling by the disturbed couple. Is it jealousy? Mischievousness? Only Jerry Springer could tell us for sure.

Otherwise, life proceeds as usual for the little brine shrimp. Their water has been a trifle cloudy of late, so I’ve cut back on feedings. The Ocean-Zoo is about a half-inch low on water, but I don’t think there’s any hurry about topping it off. Yawn.

Since my little tank of water bugs is getting to be less and less interesting of late, I have decided to place an order for Sea-Diamonds. Yes, they sound like a lame gimmick, but I’m interested in anything that might jazz up the whole Sea-Monkey experience (for me, not for them).

Anything to help me resist the impulse to flush them all down the toilet and move on to a new hobby!

Sadly, the Labor Day Weekend was not kind to the baby Sea-Monkeys. Upon my return to work I discovered that their numbers have dropped to the single digits again.

A song from my childhood serves as a touching funeral dirge for the departed baby Sea-Monkeys:

I went to the Animal Fair
The birds and the bees were there
A big baboon, by the light of the moon,
Was combing his auburn hair
The monkey, he got drunk
And stepped on the elephant’s trunk
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees
And that was the end of the monk, the monk, the monk
And that was the end of the monk!

Thanks to my sister for finding enough of the words online to refresh my memory of the song beyond “And that was the end of the monk…”. Boos and hisses to the Web site that cleaned up the song for the kiddies by changing line 5 to “the monkey fell out of his bunk.” Heaven forbid that a fictional monkey should be drunk and suffer the consequences!

Anyway, that was the end of a lot of my little Sea-Monks. I suspected that there was Sea-Monkey danger looming last week when a couple of adults died (I used the “finger over the straw” method to suck them out of the tank this time). To stave off further expirations, I used a scoop of “Sea-Monkey Medicine,” which I can now report is USELESS! Just so you know. The rest of the adults are as healthy, happy and horny as ever, and the remaining babies are churning along like everything’s okay.

Let’s hope the surviving babies will be part of a brave, new generation of vigorous Sea-Monkeys. If not, I’m sure there are plenty of as-yet-unhatched eggs waiting to spawn the next group.

Wowee! Putting the Sea-Monkeys on a windowsill has had unforeseen benefits!

The Sea-Monkey Handbook mentions that a little sunlight is good for the Sea-Monkeys because it encourages algae growth, which in turn adds additional oxygen to the water. The extra oxygen is supposed to keep all the Sea-Monkeys happy and active – especially the babies.

That would be an understatement. The little critters have been boogieing around the tank non-stop since the move. I no longer have to periodically rescue them from their logy Sea-Monkey funk with the aerator.

On top of that, we have BABIES GALORE! There are a bazillion new Sea-Monkey babies of varying sizes in the tank. I have about a dozen adults and a good fifty or so babies right now. They are flourishing in the sunlight, and can be seen doing their happy baby spirals all throughout the tank.

In their lively and energetic new Sea-Monkey lifestyle by the window, the grown-ups no longer seem to take such a Tolstoy-esque view of their existence. Mating is spontaneous – no more grim, week-long marathons. Meals are joyful, mid-somersault surface-skims. Early death no longer seems a certainty.

My shiny, happy Sea-Monkey Ocean-Zoo now produces as much interesting movement as my Lava Lamp!

The Sea-Simians and I have moved to a new cubicle! Their Ocean-Zoo now sits in a sunny windowsill, which has led to increased frolicking on the part of my little invertebrates. I am keeping a close eye on the tilt of the blinds, lest I inadvertently parboil my pets at high noon.

Meanwhile, I have discovered another Sea-Monkey colony in the billing department at my office. They were hatched a few weeks ago, so all of them are much smaller than mine. The Billing Sea-Monkeys have a Day-Glo yellow tank that came with a package of Sea-Diamonds – I’m so jealous!

What are Sea-Diamonds, you ask? Only the hallowed “Official Sea-Monkey Handbook” can do justice in describing them: “This heap of sparking ‘sea gems’ make Sea-Monkeys happy by giving them toys that they will really play with! So pretty they might as well be REAL, watch the Sea-Monkeys have fun by tossing Sea-Diamonds around like beachballs! They even ‘learn’ to climb up and ride them as if they were surfboards and get much-needed ‘exercise.’ But MOST AMAZING, as the water level drops Sea-Diamonds RISE UP from the bottom and FLOAT MIDWATER IN DEFIANCE OF THE LAW OF GRAVITY! The Sea-Monkeys now wend their way among the mysteriously suspended gems swimming in and out of the enchanted ‘maze.’ So fantastic, it MUST be seen to be believed!”

Once again I feel the need to examine some of the Handbook’s statements in more detail.

1. Although I have never observed Sea-Diamonds in action, my Sea-Monkeys don’t seem interested in playing anything but “doctor.”
2. What on earth does gravity have to do with something floating?!
3. Can you tell I’m starting to use the Handbook’s breathless descriptions as a cheap humor crutch when nothing very exciting is happening?

Anyway, my colony seems happy and healthy. I’ve noticed a lot more babies swimming around, but it’s difficult to tell if I’m observing the same ones day after day, or if they keep dying and being replaced by new hatchlings. Time will tell.

No deaths to report this week, plus the longest Sea-Monkey is getting close to the half-inch mark. Maybe the Red-Magic Vitamins are more effective than I thought!

It’s clearly not for lack of trying, but the Sea-Monkeys are not having a great deal of success when it comes to reproduction. At one point last week I glimpsed two babies in the tank. Now I can only find one, but it seems to be fairly vigorous.

I have been using the “Million-Bubble Air Pump” on a daily basis to ensure that the little larvae get enough oxygen. It’s sort of like a manual aquarium bubbler without an intake. A plastic squeeze bulb sends air through a piece of blue pumice (or something very like it). You have to take the air pump out of the tank between squeezes and pump out the water it has gathered. I think the old straw method was probably just as good.

Here’s my report on the “Red-Magic Sea-Monkey Vitamins”: LAME! Basically they’re just a packet of algae dust that appears indistinguishable from regular Sea-Monkey food. Supposedly it contains extra vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12 and C, although you’d think that if the little creatures really needed those vitamins, they would be in the regular food. Anyway, the day you feed them the vitamins, a few Sea-Monkeys do look sort of pinkish, but the effect is minimal and temporary.

My favorite feature of the Red-Magic packaging is its attempt to upsell you to a package of Sea-Monkey aphrodisiacs. I think you will appreciate this best via a direct quote from the back of the packet: “RED-MAGIC KEEPS SEA-MONKEYS ‘IN THE PINK’ You can alternate your Sea-Monkeys feeding program with ‘Red Magic,’ Sea-Monkey vitamins instead of their regular food… Now, with all that extra health, put them in the mood for love and breeding with ‘Cupid’s Arrow’ (item 84). It can turn a Sea-Monkey aquarium into a regular ‘love boat’!”

Let’s examine this a bit:

1. “Extra health”? I thought “health” was a superlative. Who would have thought you could have extra? “I’m feeling so good today, I think I’ll tuck some of my extra health away for cold and flu season!”
2. Why is the TranScience Corporation so enamored of hyphens?
3. Judging by the behavior of my Sea-Monkeys, I can’t imagine anyone seeing a need for MORE breeding activity. My Sea-Monkey aquarium isn’t a ‘love boat,’ it’s a Roman orgy!

If I thought that Sea-Monkey Spanish fly would increase the number of surviving babies, I might give it a try. However, my little colony seems to be amorous enough to quell my worries about succeeding generations. We’ll just have to give them a little time.

I hadn’t expected to report again so soon, but there have been some significant developments in Sea-Monkey Land since yesterday.

First, and most important, we have babies! I only see a couple of them, but they seem to be hardy little swimmers. They prefer the surface of the tank, and they can be glimpsed valiantly chugging through the water among the gargantuan adults.

Second, Juliet is now free of Romeo. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. We have a couple of new lifeless husks at the bottom, and he’s probably one of them. They’re really rather creepy with their little black pinpoint eyes staring lifelessly as the current gently lifts and drops their stiffened corpses. (Stephen King, eat your heart out!)

News flash number three: My Sea-Monkey supplies came in the mail! I now have extra food (probably enough to sustain ten generations of the little buggers), Red Magic vitamins (to turn them pink – woohoo!), a “Million-Bubble Air Pump” (to make sure I don’t accidentally drink Sea-Monkey soup one day when I’m trying to improve their oxygen supply), and a packet of “Sea Medic” Sea-Monkey medicine (in case I become alarmed at the mortality rate and feel something must be done).

At this point I think I can count, among the larger Sea-Monkeys, five females (I can’t tell Juliet from the others anymore) and four or five males. There are some littler ones, too, but I’m not sure of their gender. Natural selection is winnowing them down to the apex of Sea-Monkey evolution.

So that’s the status of the little colony. It’s the story of life: birth, sex, death, and everything in between. What more could you ask for?!