A Tribute - Part II

The girls were in love and completely fascinated by their hermit crabs. The very next day, they insisted on taking them down to the ocean and playing with them in the sand and water (which I believe could be classified as cruel and unusual punishment for a hermit crab!). It wasn't until that night that I noticed that, somehow, there was only one crab left in the cage. I knew that they hadn't been out of the cage since we had come back to the house, so I could only assume that Shiny had seized the opportunity and made a break for it (or was left buried under the sand somewhere...can hermit crabs dig?).

Not really surprising that one little crab got lost in the mix of all this!

Especially when its owner did this the entire time!

The dilemma that Andy and I were faced with was buy a new "Shiny" to secretly replace the lost one or let Kerri in on what happened and let her pick out a new one. The decision was taken out of our hands when we realized that they stores were already closed, so admit it and move on was our strategy.

I should have known better than to worry. In typical Kerri fashion (after being assured that she could get a new one), she just shrugged it off with some type of comment about Shiny finding her family out in the ocean and that was that. Her new crab still doesn't have an official name, but it's been called Hermie, Sebastian, Buddy, and Crabby. More often than not, though, it just "my crab."

The crabs lasted the rest of vacation and the trip home, although one had to be rescued from being dropped under the seat. We also did some reading up on hermit crabs and what they need. What they don't tell you in the store is that those tiny cages that they come in are too small for them to live in (well, maybe it's too small to be happy in....if you look long enough you'll see that there are some people crazy about their hermit crabs!). We decided to make them a bigger home, and spent quite a bit of time searching Goodwill and Walmart for a new home with plenty of accessories and ended up with quite a cute little environment for them.  

to be continued...

If you missed part I, read it here.