Farewell Tommy

Tommy the Triops - deceased

Ryan wrote this last week.

Our pet Tommy likes to swim around in his tank and eat the food that we give him, such as bits of peas and carrots. At times we've seen him overcome with a very strange behavior in which he crazily tries to dig under the little plastic fossil in his tank, switching between a medium fast pace and a super revved-up mode. Dad has said that perhaps he tries to dig under the rock to shed his exoskeleton (or "shell", as we say).

Tommy has an interesting appearance as a so-called "prehistoric" crustacean. He's about 2 inches long, with probably about 1 inch of that being his tail. He has a sort of crescent-shaped plate on (or for) his head with 3 eyes on it (2 big eyes and a little one for sensing whether he's right side-up or upside-down) with the points on the crescent pointing backards and out. Under his body, he has many legs, like a centipede, which produce a sort of strobe effect when they move. His mouth is also on his underside (like a manta ray) and sometimes we've seen him eat food while going around on his back.