Yesterday, with River, we went to PetSmart and got a pair of hermit crabs. They're really cute, even thought they don't do much. We named them Julio and Consuela. Julio is the larger one. At first, when we put the hermit crabs in the ten-gallon tank, Consuela was the first to roam around. She found herself a spot to burrow in and has stayed there ever since. Julio was different. He wouldn't move for anything for the first half hour, but later, I spied him in a different place, creeping back into his shell after I had tromped into the room. He's scared of people. Each time I went back into the room after that, I saw Julio crawling around--so I creeped in quietly and watched his slow progression towards the banana chip treats.
Later, as I played Bioshock 2, my brother and I noticed him putting his legs and claws up against the glass, towards us. I wondered what he expected to achieve by doing this. Was he angry at us for taking him in captivity? Or did he want to be closer? Either way, we did nothing to him and watched in semi-fascination.
Son wanted to know how to tell the difference between male and female hermit crabs, so he went to look it up. We never bothered to ask the people at PetSmart what they were. He came back later and told me that females will have two small dots on their undersides. Okay. First, the crab needs to be compliant and come out of its shell. THEN you can check for their two-dot thingy.
I think that we know for sure that Julio is not female. Now we wait for Consuela to be nice and quit sleeping.
I love the line "so I creeped in quietly and watched his slow progression towards the banana chip treats" cuz it reminds me of "The Yellow Wallpaper."
ReplyDeleteI don't think I could ever buy pet crabs. I'd probably kill them, by accident, or never take care of them, cuz yeah, I'm irresponsible like that.