The Calvinator » March 2007 Journal Entries » AboutMyBaby - online baby scrapbooks, photo albums, videos, birth and pregnancy announcements

< > March 2007

Mon, Mar 5, 2007 7:00 PM
In Loving Memory
Herman: ??? – 02/27/2007

Oh Herman, we hardly knew ye.

We got you at a local pet store on February 20, 2007. Calvin picked you out because your festive green St. Patrick’s Day shell caught his eye. After agonizing for nearly 4.2 minutes over which extra shells to buy (apparently you hermit crabs are picky bastards about your shells), we packed you up in a plastic butter dish with breathing holes and took you home.

We set you up in your state-of-the-art Wal-Mart brand 10-gallon fish tank with plenty of things to climb on and hide in. We set you up with your 2 types of water (seriously, hermit crabs, what’s your deal?), hermit food, hermit treats and safety sponges so you wouldn’t drown on us. And then we even used the rest of my birthday money to buy you a damn heater for under your tank.

It was nearly 24 hours before we even discovered what you looked like on account of you refusing to emerge from your festive shell. From all the articles I read about you guys, this anxiety/stress is apparently normal when brought home from a store. So we sat back and waited for you to relax a bit without having to break out the hermit crab Prozac.

You finally showed your ugly little cute face the next day and even managed to move around a bit. But that was about it. After that you were almost always in the same place we’d left you. I was a little concerned, but nothing too serious had happened, so I tried to relax. That is until I checked your tank one day to find that you’d SEVERED YOUR OWN CLAW.

I raced to the internet to learn more and discovered that crabs under stress will sometimes do this and as long as you’re well taken care of, the limb will slowly grow back and all will be well in Hermit Land. After moving your entire world into the bathroom to increase your humidity just to be safe, I thought you’d be ok.

However, one morning about 3 days later, I peeked in at you to see how you were doing, but you didn’t move. So I picked you up to see if your remaining claws would stretch a bit like they always did, but no luck there either. I told Joep I suspected you might have died during the night, but since I didn’t smell THE SMELL, I left you in your tank to see if your condition would improve from MOST LIKELY DEAD to MOST LIKELY NOT DEAD by the time we got home that night.

(You see, in all the literature I read on hermit crabs, every piece mentioned that when a hermit crab dies, its owner will get knocked out by the smell of rotting fish [mmmm, makes you want to go out and buy one, doesn’t I?]. Until one smells that delightful smell, one can assume the crab is hanging in there.)

That night when we got home, I went in to check on you again and not only had your condition not improved, but when I picked you up to get a closer look, the smell of a thousand rotting fish reached up and sucker-punched me in the face. And then it continued to punch me in the kidneys as I laid on the bathroom floor, begging for mercy.

Ok, so you were dead for sure and off you went into a Ziploc brand baggie with triple seal protection. And by triple seal protection, I mean you were encased in 3 baggies just in case that smell somehow found its way through all the plastic and back to my bruised and battered body.

Because we didn’t really feel Calvin was old enough to understand the whole concept of death and because we’re giant wussies, Joep & I decided to tell Calvin that you were sick and had to go back to the store to get better. In the meantime, I stopped at a different local pet store and looked into homing a couple more hermit crabs. Thankfully, this time, I talked to someone who actually knew about hermit crabs and helped me pick out 2 healthy ones this time (apparently Herman was most likely sick when we got him according to Hermit Crab Lady).

So after cleaning out your former home and disinfecting all your things, we placed Spidey & Blue Man (names compliments of Calvin) into your old spot and crossed our fingers. Right from the start, they’ve been crazy active and moved more in the first 45 seconds than you did the entire week we had you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about these 2 as well, but so far so good. Let’s hope this time goes better than it did with you, Herman.

In the meantime, Calvin lives in blissful ignorance about the fact that his first real pet (besides the girls) up and died on my birthday. Let’s just hope these 2 new guys aren’t waiting for Joep’s birthday to up and keel over. Because if they are, I don’t think I can handle that smell again (times TWO!) without keeling over myself.

Comments:
Bonnie: Gah!

K, you are too funny! I wonder if that smell was any different from the smell of our gecko (who passed away under the heat lamp).

Add a comment:

Name: Email:
Comment:

Notify me of scrapbook updates