Beneath reflections in the fountain
The starry sky and Utah mountains
They are swimming happily, can't you see?
A life that's so sublime palace of the brine.

- The Pixies, Palace of the Brine

My third sea-monkey died last week. At first I thought it might be giving birth — sea-monkeys look insane when they're reproducing, with all that uncontrollable spinning and seizing at the bottom of the tank.

But then I looked closer, and realized my monkey wasn't moving. And, even worse, it had turned a deathly shade of pink.

A couple days later, it turned black and shriveled to about half its size. Losing a pet is always heartbreaking, but I figure that since I've been raising sea-monkeys since March, three dead ones isn't such a bad track record.

Sea-monkeys, in case you've never had any of your own, are actually a variety of the brine shrimp. They've been marketed as pets since 1960, when scientist Harold von Braunhut observed their eggs have a long shelf life out of water, and, once hatched, they're pretty easy to care for. (Besides, they're way too small to eat, so what else are you going to do with them?)

After re-naming them "Instant Life," von Braunhut started selling packets of sea-monkey eggs as pets for 49 cents.

Since then sea-monkey kits have been sold from the back pages of comic books, in toy stores and, of course, on the Web. Today's sea-monkeys come with a two-year guarantee and are sold in 12 countries worldwide. (This year they expanded to Korea, Spain and the Czech Republic.)

Since I'd been hearing about these weird, watery pets for years but never actually seen one, I decided to get in on the action. My first step was to enlist the help of Susan Barclay, a Canadian woman who likes to be called "The Sea-Monkey Lady."

Not only does Susan run the best sea-monkey site on the Web, seamonkeyworship.com, she's the author of a 178-page book about them (The Ultimate Guide to Sea-Monkeys, Street Saint Publications, $13.95) and has lectured about sea-monkeys in TV studios, classrooms and museums around the world.

My first monkey-related mistake was assuming "Instant Life" equaled "instant fun." If you've ever seen a box of sea monkeys, you've probably seen the creatures illustrated as very human-like, wearing clothes and playing tennis and such.

The truth is, sea-monkeys do none of this! In fact, for several weeks, my sea-monkeys were only about the size of a pinhead, and I had to use a magnifying glass to see them.

After about six weeks, though, I was finally able to name my pets (Herb, Milo, Mary Alice) and show them off to my friends and neighbors. Through about 20 e-mails to Susan, I learned about several interesting facets of this pop-culture phenomenon.

For instance, there's:

•Sea-monkey anatomy. Did you know sea-monkeys breathe through their legs? They're also born with a third eye, which they lose as adults. And, as Susan once explained to me, they have "strong chitinous exoskeletons that will protect them from harm." I'm so jealous.

•Sea-monkey digestion. Every five days, I feed my monkeys a tiny spoonful of food (which came with the eggs). You can tell when sea-monkeys are full because they'll have a green or brown stripe going down the center of their bodies. They also feed off algae, so it's a good idea never to clean the tank.

•Sea-monkey love. Sea-monkeys reproduce sexually and asexually — how convenient is that? When they do mate with another monkey, it can last days at a time. (This scared the life out of me when I first saw it.) Birth is even more horrifying, and looks like, as Susan puts it, "a death throe."

•Sea-monkey disease. When my monkeys were only three weeks old, tiny black dots began to appear in the tank. I e-mailed Susan, who quickly confirmed it was a form of very dangerous and rare bacteria. Through Susan's tight sea-monkey connections, I received a packet of "Sea Medic" within days. Thank goodness they all survived.

•Sea-monkey death. "I had one tank going for about 26 months, and then … well, I'm still moving towards the acceptance phase for that tank, so I better not talk about it," Susan wrote to me, during one of our many sea-monkey heart-to-hearts. I realize I'm going to lose many more sea monkeys in the months (and years) ahead, so I'm trying to enjoy them while they're still here. This, I believe, is the greatest sea-monkey lesson of all.

So now it's been more than four months since I first dropped the eggs into the sea-monkey tank, and I still haven't tired of watching them swim.

Some of my friends make fun of me for such loyalty, but why should I be ashamed? Sea-monkeys have held a place in pop culture for more than 40 years.

Brooke Shields is a longtime sea-monkey fan, you know. Liz Phair and the Pixies have sung about them. They've surfaced on The Simpsons, King of Queens and South Park. Back in 1992, CBS even aired a sitcom called The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys (too bad it didn't last a season).

To some people, they may just be shrimp, but to me, sea-monkeys are an innocent, enlightening gift. Before raising them I had no idea what the Beatles meant when they sang, "Everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey."

Now, I'm pretty sure I understand.

Pop Candy is a weekly column about popular culture. Click here to visit the archive. E-mail Whitney Matheson at wmatheson@usatoday.com.