Great Things are Afoot

...in hermit-crab land. It was back in July that I first acquired Intrepid and Pokey. Pokey unfortunately never emerged from his molt. Intrepid did, but became a most unsatisfying pet, exceedingly timid (ironically), and mostly staying holed up in hiding all the time. His unsatisfactory petitude caused me to hesitate about throwing good money after bad, so to speak, and replacing Pokey. Also the weather has been so cold that it's hard to transport the little guys. However, a few days ago, I finally decided to get another crab.

They had some really big ones at the pet store. As usual, I asked for the smallest one, figuring that it would be least likely to be suffering from delayed molting problems. It came in a garish orange painted shell. When I put it in the tank, it was exceedingly cautious and didn't move at all for quite some time. Because of the cautiousness and the diamond pattern on the shell, I decided to name it Confucius.

Little did I know that that very night Confucius was going to shake up the whole hermit crab world!

I had put a little pile of cut-up pear core in the food dish. When I came back in the morning, the pear was all scattered, and the orange patterned shell was lying vacant!! Confucius had changed his shell for a much larger one.


You can just barely see his little claw sticking out of it in the above photo (front center). The discarded shell is lying in the background.

Furthermore, this big shell was not the first one Confucius had tried. Another, somewhat smaller, shell was sitting in the middle of the water dish. If Confucius didn't put it there, I don't see who did.


Finally, while I watched, Confucius attempted to drag a large chunk of pear down the whole length of the tank into a hole he had dug for himself. I must say intrepid never did anything nearly this interesting!

I am now more enthusiastic about hermit crab ownership than I have been in a really long time.