Saturday, January 20, 2007

Obi-wan Kenobi Crabs?

While passing time in Kent waiting for my mother to get off of work for a business meeting pertaining to Perfect PC, I stopped by the super market to see what they had in the way of futons for the shop. While there I passed through the pet section to look at the fish. Let's face it, the fish are the coolest part of any super market. Across from the goldfish were little 3"x3" circular tubs with hermit crabs in them. Noticing two of the younger crabs trapped in much-to-small for them shells I decided to save them from their purgatory, and brought them home.

Well, that is a lie. I did not have time to stop by the house before the business meeting so I took the crabs to dinner. There's nothing quite like the strange looks you receive when your waitress comes to the table and notices live crabs sitting beside the condiments. Especially at a fancy restaurant.

Walmart was so ill-prepared to care for hermit crabs that  it was mind boggling that they even had them in stock. The crabs I purchased are Ecuadorian crabs, meaning from the coastline and they had them all crammed into little containers of freshwater. They didn't even keep hermit crab food or vitamins in stock! So while you could buy them there you'd have nothing to feed them unless you made another stop elsewhere and bought it separately.

I wound up going to the nearest pet shop in Kent and picking up a bottle of all-around balanced nutritional supplement hermit crab food, though you can feed them anything (from fruit to french fries) it's important for them to have a healthy primary dish.

I'm now the caretakers of Sven and Unaru! They're living contently in a small 5 gallon aquarium with sandstone pebbles, a marble freshwater bathing pool (for hydration requirements) with a sponge in it (for humidity needs), various shells for them to move into when they outgrow their current shells (which will be very soon due to the poor conditions they were living in at the store), a small piece of driftwood for them to climb around on (Sven loves this), a lil' upturned clam shell filled with moist food and a second upturned clam shell filled with salt water because as Ecuadorian crabs they MUST have that to survive.

The crabs themselves are smaller than 1". In an orange shell we've got Sven and in a dark shell we've got Unaru. Aptly named I might add because Sven is always up and about first thing in the morning, whereas Unaru digs herself a hole into the pebbles in the morning so she can sneak in more sleep -- but you can coax her up by offering food. Similar to myself I'm told.

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