My oldest friend’s first memory of me is not a flattering one. It was the first week of year seven and we had to interview each other and present our findings. What was my favourite animal, she inquired reasonably. “I hate all animals,” I replied, “apart from maybe squirrels or frogs.” Twenty-two years later, I would like to plead diminished responsibility. This wasn’t really my view, but that of my mum, who really did hate animals.
So, naturally, we weren’t allowed pets. For a long time, the closest I got was fostering the primary school stick insects during holidays. (I can still tell you the delicate difference between a stick insect poo and an egg. The egg has a dot on it. The other is just a poo.) Then, in year five, I came across Sea-Monkeys. It was the late 90s, and they were marketed as educational toys and sold in bookshops. With all due respect to the late Sea-Monkeys inventor Harold von Braunhut, they are one of history’s greatest cons.
Sea-Monkeys start life as brine shrimp eggs contained in a sachet: tip them in water and they start to hatch. In the 60s and 70s, they were advertised in comics using illustrations of human-like figures. Apparently, many buyers were disappointed by the dissimilarity, such was the strength of Von Braunhut’s con. Sea-Monkeys actually look like swimming head lice, though, at first, they look like nothing at all – which won me the prize for smallest pet at pet day.
I became aggressively proud of my Sea-Monkeys. Not only were they prize-winners, but nobody else had them (and, surely, nobody else wanted them). I obsessively browsed the accompanying leaflet that advertised such marvels as “The Great Sea-Monkey Baseball Game” and a racetrack. While I wasn’t sure that my vacant little swimmers even knew up from down, Von Braunhut had prepared me for magic to happen before my very eyes, and I begged to buy it. Unsurprisingly, this was a non-starter.
So my artemia crew swam around idly behind the kitchen sink until mum accidentally knocked them out of the window. Stricken, she guiltily bought me a new set. All was well … until they started having orgies. Sea-Monkeys mate by biting on to each other’s tails. (Do not ask me the finer mechanics.) Mine were starting to swim around in trails of half a dozen and more. Repulsed, I “let them go”, thus concluding my pet-owning career.
In an unexpected about-face, my parents got a dog called Bruce two years ago – and they are both absolutely silly for him. Whenever I am home, I swim in the sea and have accepted that one day I will be dragged into the deep by one of my abandoned Sea-Monkeys, now a giant, sewage-addled mutant. If I’m lucky, perhaps Bruce will swim in and save me.