When last we checked in our formerly dehydrated Devonian friends, the Aquasaurs, a large number of them were swimming merrily around their small plastic tank. They were all either larvae—almost invisible to the naked eye—or babies back then, in what was to be in hindsight a better time. You can see (barely) three of the baby aquasaurs in the photo to the left. OK, it's an extremely craptacular photo, but the lighting and reflections from the tank make focusing and metering hard. And I guess a good macro lens for my Canon DSLR would be a great help, too (my birthday's coming up soon… hint, hint).

Life was grand for the little wee Aquasaurs, for a while, anyhow. That was before one of them morphed into the giant triops from Hell. We here pretty happy to finally see him/her/it in its adult form, and he seemed to coexist happily with his tank mates. But after a while, we noticed that there were fewer and fewer of the baby aquasaurs left in the tank. One day there were five, then three, then one. At one time there seemed to be countless numbers of the little larval critters shooting around the water, too, but not anymore.

We therefore came to the conclusion that the big one ate everyone else in the tank! Yuck!

So now he/she/it is the sole occupant of the little plastic tank, where he spends his days swimming about and rummaging through the filth at the bottom of the habitat, which is apparently what they do in the wild, too. Oh, and it molts, too, leaving little translucent Aquasaur simulacra scattered around.

For some reason I've become the designated keeper of the Aquasaur, and have taken over feeding the thing and changing the water in the tank. (By the way, this tendency is precisely why I refuse to give in to the pleas to get a dog, because despite my kids' assurances that they'll take care of it, I know I'm going to end up being one of those guys you see wandering the neighborhood at 11:30 at night with a leash in one hand and a little plastic bag of poo in the other. Uh-uh. No way. I've cleaned up enough poo that's not my own, thank you very much.)

Eventually, this cannibalistic critter will shuffle off to the Great Vernal Pool in the Sky, and the grand experiment will be over. They're not the longest-lived animals there are, usually kicking around for a few weeks. Of course we only used half the eggs included in the Uncle Milton Aquasaur kit, so doubtless when we start to forget how gross they were we'll probably grow up another batch.

Yeah, they're gross, but then it's kind of cool to have pets that eat each other.