The Po Show

My New Babies

Ohhhh myyyyy, so much I could have written, here on my first post after returning back to NY and the blogosphere. So much about the summer, and how the kids did, and thoughts on Matthew turning 12, and lots about the back to school process. But sadly I have been afflicted with an initially mysterious ailment that has, in the past day or so, revealed itself to be nothing more than an icky viral whatever. But I've felt not great, I've been very busy putting our lives back in order, and thus have not gotten back to posting.

But now I must tell you about my latest obsession: my new prides and joys. They don't look a thing like me, but I have worried over them and cared incessantly for them and stared at them in fascination for over a week now.

They are aquasaurs. They are actually Triops longicaudatus, little water-dwelling creatures that have been around, basically unchanged, since before the dinosaurs. Now they are merchandised by an educational toy manufacturer for kids (and dubbed Aquasaurs, since Triops longicaudatus doesn't trip off the tongue quite as readily) in a kit that includes a plastic tank, dried eggs, and food for the little beasts. Tessa saw the kit at TRU and immediately wanted it. Unbeknownst to me, she got online later and put it on her Amazon wish list, so she received her beloved aquasaurs for her birthday. Naturally we couldn't hatch them at Grandma's house, so we waited till we got home and set up the tank last Thursday.

The eggs were suppose to hatch within 1-2 days, but by the end of the 2nd day there didn't seem to be anything going on. On the 3rd day, I was ready to call it a bust, and Tessa was ready to try again with more eggs, when I saw a tiny little spot of something hovering in the water. The aquasaur hatchings are **tiny**, like a speck, and they flit around in the water with little jerky motions. So it looked like one freaking aquasaur had hatched (about 50 eggs were in the packet, and we were instructed to put in half the packet).

I watched, sitting on the floor in front of the tank, for days, for long minutes at a time, as the little speck grew into a feathery swimming thing. It grew more, and developed discernible, itty bitty, legs and eyes and tail. And then I realized that there was a new little speck flitting around, so it seemed that a new egg had hatched, days after it was supposed to.

I worried that the water was too cold for the tiny population to thrive, so I started putting a heating pad up against the tank. This was evidently the right thing to do, for more tiny little specks joined the party. So now, nine days after starting this whole affair, there is one largish aquasaur (about half an inch long and looking like the picture on the box, which Tessa named Moonstone), a little feathery swimming one (named Bella), and about six little specks of various size (the largest one is named Jade, and the other tiny ones have gone unnamed by Tessa. I call them the scoot-scoots, since that's the motion they make through the water). We were supposed to start cleaning the tank on the eighth day by scooping out half the water and replacing it (oh, did I mention that we can only use spring water for everything the aquasaurs come in contact? And that on the first day, I didn't know that, so I had to empty about a million little half pint bottles of water into the tank, since that was the only spring water we had on hand). But I'm afraid to scoop out any water, for fear of scooping up some of the scoot-scoots.

So me and my dizzy head have been sitting on the cold tile of the dining room floor (the tank is set up on Tessa's art table, an old coffee table), staring endlessly at the little aquasaurs, trying to count them, trying to see if they are growing, hoping that they are not dead. I am lavishing buckets of care on them, removing bits of food from the water's surface when it starts to spoil, checking for murkiness in the water, examining the water temperature a hundred times a day, worrying about their well-being.

I've heard of women redirecting their baby lust into caring for a dog or a cat, but I may be the first overly maternal caregiver to water bugs.