Have you ever heard of a triop?
Let me elighten you.

These seeming figments reside in an innocent looking paper envelope. The packaging promises children that Triops have outlived the dinosaurs. Being a well meaning parent and wanting to reward Walker in a job-well-done, I agreed to get the triops, which were his choice out of everything on the shelf (it was the dinosaur hook that got him.)

Now I have seen these packages, and sea monkeys all my life, and in my mind they were in the same category as Xray glasses. So I thought, "what a better gift than a low maintinance, non-hatching, mini-monster."

Well, not only did they hatch, but double in size every couple of days. The poetic justice is that every thing turned out to be just the opposite, except for the mini-monster part.

An example of their care involves having a precise water temperature (a bare light bulb burning 24/7 next to the Jar), the need for spring water (not tap) that needs to be changed frequently, and a complicated feeding process that involves different color pellets that need to be crushed in a precise order. I love the part that says "watch out, they'll eat each other!" Oh, yeah if you want to grow large triops you can supplement their diet with freeze dried worms or brine shrimp and also raw carrots or fish.

Now the good news and the bad news. My wife follows instructions to a T (she has kept 5 Wal-mart fish alive for a year). So these triops will not likely have an early demise.(she actually dropped one into the toilet when changing water , picked it out of the toilet,it "jumped"out of her hand and onto the floor. She quickly returned him to the tank and he still lives) The good news is, their life span is only 30 days!

The kids have really enjoyed them. So in the end, it has been a positive experience. I leave you with two paragraphs from the instructions:

Congratulations! You are about to emark on a biological adventure that will take you back to the Age of the Dinosaurs and give you weeks of enjoyment as you grow your very own"living dinosaurs!"j

Important note to parents: In caring for the environment, we ask, that when disposing of the tank contents at the end of the Triops experience, please use a small amount of household sanitizer inside the water to extinguish any remaining unhatched eggs.

2 WEEKS TO GO!!!