I TRIED TO GET THE CAT TO DRINK THEM, BUT SHE’S ALL, “WTF?”

I need some help with my sea monkeys. I am very new to pet ownership, let alone sea monkey breeding, but I just have one question: How do I kill them? What makes them die?

Don’t get me wrong—I love my sea monkeys. I raised them from when they were just a little sack of powder. I remember how proud I was when I first stirred them into this world! But our relationship is just going nowhere. They swim and swim, and they are beautiful and majestic in their own tiny little way. (Except for when they have that weird, turgid, black pouch on their… abdomen? Do they have abdomens? Anyway, I was going to go in there with an X-Acto knife and a crochet hook and see I can’t extract one of the pouches for dissection—just in case it’s delicious monkey caviar—but then I chickened out when I realized they’re probably just constipated, or unable to fully scrape off the remains of some sort of conjoined twin.) They have many mysteries, but the only one left that I want to discover is how these beautiful, majestic creatures die, and how I can make it happen.

I still have the tiny food packet that came with them, and it refuses to run out! It’s some sort of magical, bottomless food pouch that would be the end of world hunger, except that the food is so gross. I’m supposed to feed them every two days, but I can’t live with that sort of oppression. You’re telling me that I have to think about these things every other day for the rest of my life? Sorry, monkeys. Think again. You’re going to live or die on MY schedule, which means I only feed you on the weekends, and only if I’m really bored.

I thought that kind of tough love would be the end of them, but no. They live. Not all of them, but the hearty ones make it to Saturday somehow. Every weekend there are still five or so monkeys moving very slowly through the murky water, with barely enough energy to raise a flipper and give me the finger when I put my face next to the glass. So I begrudgingly scoop out a tiny portion of monkey chow from the magical pouch and the cycle continues, but this time with just the strongest monkeys. Here is my concern/hope: Through this kind of neglect, I am selectively breeding some sort of SuperSeaMonkey, who doesn’t even need food. Or who maybe, eats humans.

Man, I am really regretting tying those poison-tipped darts to their heads now.