It was a beautiful spring day, full of bliss. Only three days left till school’s end. We had been counting to the last day of school, down to the second. The afternoon showed promise for outdoor fun, not to mention bliss. The birds were chirping and the sun was shining. It was the perfect day to play outside. Was it also the perfect day to murder our precious planarians?

If you somehow didn’t end up reading that article a few months ago (The New Superhero: A Worm?” May 23, 2024, https://jewishlink.news/the-new-superhero-a-worm/, the best, most luminous article in existence, then feel sorry you haven’t yet experienced both of our supreme awesomeness combined.

Along with that past paragraph, we both feel we should explain who and what planarians are.

Planaria is a type of flatworm. Most worms in general don’t really seem to do much. They move around in the mud, you can cut them up and they become two, but not much else. But planarians are not like most worms. Planarians can regenerate their body parts, even specific organs after being cut, because of types of stem cells called neoblasts, which are distributed throughout the body when the planaria is cut. Planarians are virtually immortal and pretty hard to kill, unless naturally, or from shock.

This article is a scientific memoir of the life of a few special worms. So, Carolina Biological, the site that we ordered our special friends on, promised that, in our care, the planarians would live only up to five days. This was not the case.

When we first got the worms, it was a snow day, the first thing that definitely was not beneficial to the planarians’ health. Hannah took them in, and unpacked them all on the kitchen table. Her family members were thrilled.

“It was traumatizing. I didn’t go in the kitchen for months,” said Zippy S. Kratz, a member of the household who noticed that there were bottles of worms swimming in water on her kitchen table.

The planarians, which were dark brown, about an inch long and just a bit thicker than the lead in a pencil, lived/were dissected at Hannah’s kitchen table for around three months. Then the worst possible thing happened. Household CEO Mrs. Elizabeth B. Kratz kicked them out, no sympathy whatsoever. She said, heartlessly, that she needed the kitchen table back.

We were faced with a dilemma. Until… Mrs. Batya Kinsberg, the sixth-grade science teacher at the Moriah School, saved the lives of a few hundred flatworms right in the middle of their mating season, offering them a space to huddle in her classroom.

In the time period where they lived in the sixth grade science room, the sixth grade students hated both them and us, but the planarians thrived!

Eventually the time came where summer calls and the torture of school ends and we were faced with yet another problem. What to do with the worms? We went to the library and printed out beautiful posters, and set some up in the shuls. No one responded to the offer of free worms (except a 7-year-old kid who thought it was a prank). Like why would anyone not want a bunch of free flatworms? We also wrote an article in The Jewish Link. Of course no one wanted any because of a mistake in the very first line. Planaria is singular, planarians the plural. The only reason the editors didn’t understand this was because of our already unique grammar choices.

We had been counting to the last day of school down to the second. But then a problem arose—the planarians were still alive! It hurt our hearts to get rid of them, but we knew we had to.

Hannah Googled ways to dispose of planarians while Hadar sent a rude email to the company we got them from (because the company said they would survive three to five days in our care).

It’s illegal to release planarians into the world because they’re an invasive species or whatever, and since they are a little bit immortal, that was a problem.

So. Google says that basically the only way to dispose of planarians is to either freeze them alive, or boil them alive. We didn’t love those options.

In the end, we just poured lukewarm water into the planarian jars, and then buried them in Mrs. Kratz’s yard before we could see if they were still alive.

They might still be there right now. Being immortal. In Bergenfield.

Hadar Elias goes to the Moriah School of Englewood, and loves using her laser eyes to destroy bowling alleys. She also loves stealing Hannah’s ketchup. If you ever need a friend to send a rude email to a company or stop Hannah from destroying the world, email her at [email protected].

Hannah Kratz, better known as Hannah the Great, goes to the Moriah School of Englewood and would appreciate it if you sent her ketchup because Hadar keeps stealing it. Her ambitions are taking over the world and laughing as everyone trembles in her wrath. If you email [email protected] she will interview you as the Kids Link Superfan of the Month.