27 September 2007

For post 150, I give you monkeys

If you wander over to the other side of my building you might find Kevin and Brendan hard at work doing whatever it is that they do over there. Usually I just see Brendan doing crossword puzzles and Kevin typing his girlfriend on Hotmail, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are working. In fact, they are two of the busiest captains in the building because contrary to popular belief, shamming is hard work! Anyway, if you happen to stumble into their section you may see a small portion of Kevin’s tiny desk dedicated to the miracle of life. No, it’s not a diorama of fornicating sheep or a copy of the “Chicken Book”. Instead, it is a small tank filled with greenish water and sea monkeys.

Not something you want to cuddle with

While I’ve always heard of sea monkeys, throughout my short life I’ve never had the fortune to be the proud owner of a batch of them. I’ve had dogs, cats, fish and currently I have crabs (the hermit kind, not the ones requiring ointment). I’ve never really saw the fascination with having a bunch of brine shrimp in a bucket. They don’t fetch, you can’t pet them, they’re not colorful, they don’t do tricks, and they aren’t exactly what you’d call the cutest of critters to have as a pet. So why is it that I am fascinated by these things? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I am perplexed by the fact that you can order these Artemia NYOS (their official name) through the mail and the only action required is to “just add water”. Voila! Instant pets! No walking, house training, hairballs to clean, or picking up poop (by catapulting the turds into the neighbor’s yard). Plus, they are guaranteed to live 2 years! Let’s see the SPCA give a guarantee like that to Fluffy! Just feed according to the directions and replace the water when it gets down to a certain point. That’s it. I was surprised to see how fast they grew, although I am disappointed that they won’t grow big enough to be dipped in cocktail sauce. Kevin has thinned the ranks a little by overfeeding them, but that just means the hearty ones remain. I call it, survival of the fattest.

It’s illegal to have pets here according to General Order #1. Of course this order covers a LOT of things that one is not allowed to do in a war zone, but soldiers tend to bend them slightly to make life not-so-Spartan. One way to keep in touch with the normal life back home is to take care of the wildlife, unless it’s bugs in which case we spray them with every known pesticide short of DDT and flame throwers. I’ve talked about P-Cat and Blanca the dog before, the FOB mascots, and I can see how these critters could carry a disease or give you a nasty gash, but I’m not sure how the monkeys fall in the mix. I know of no historical reports of someone contracting scabies from a sea monkey or someone losing a digit while dipping their finger into the tank. The website says that they are totally harmless to humans and can’t survive out of the brackish water, also known as “the formula”. Kind of like general officers that can’t survive outside of their air conditioned armored trucks.

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