Catching Up, part one
Sep. 23rd, 2003 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillSaturday:
We were walking through the mall toward the bookstore and we passed a table covered in blue sand and dotted with shells. Kip wanted to stop and look, and it quickly became apparent that some of the shells had legs and were walking around. The longer we watched, the neater they seemed. We went off to the bookstore, then dropped by the pet store and found a book on hermit crabs, then went back to the crab table, and chose a couple, with help from the book.
They are very cool. We got a 10 gallon aquarium and put 25 pounds of pea gravel in the bottom (hermit crabs like to be able to bury themselves once in a while) and added a bit of rotten log and a piece of bark for them to climb on (they love to climb) and generally set it up for them. When it gets colder we'll need to get an under-tank warming pad to keep them at about 75 degrees.
It turns out that the name hermit-crab is a misnomer--they run around in packs of a dozen to over a hundred and a lone hermit crab is not a very happy creature. Therefore we got two. We named one Julian of Norwich and the other one Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus is the more outgoing of the two. We refer to them as "she" (Julian) and "he" (Cassiodorus) but these are entirely theoretical constructs for our psychological and linguistic comfort--it is practically impossible for a human to determine the gender of a live hermit crab. Somehow the crabs know, which is the important thing. For our practical purposes it doesn't matter; hermit crab eggs will only hatch in the sea.
We got extra shells for them so they wouldn't be shell-less when they outgrew their present homes, and the first thing Cassiodorus did when we got them home was try on another shell. He picked it up in his second pair of legs (the claws are considered the first pair) and turned it over and over, checking it out from every side; he tucked his antennae in the opening, and then (briefly) his eyestalks; he felt inside with his claws. Several times he moved up to the edge of his present shell, so that we could see his fourth and fifth pairs of legs, which are much smaller than the second and third pair and much lighter colored, but retreated into his original shell again. Finally he went for it, hurriedly transferring his soft white abdomen (longer than I'd expected; kind of like a wasp's) to the new shell.
Then he walked around in his new shell, turning it this way and that, and patting it, over his shoulders, with his antennae, as if to check out how far it extended behind him. Kip, watching, said "does this shell make my butt look big?" But the whole time he was trying on the new shell he kept one leg in his old shell, as if he were afraid some crab would come along and steal it. This paranoia is understandable; in the wild, shells are in high demand, and unattended shells are quickly snapped up. Finding a single new shell can lead to a massive swap-fest as crab after crab switches to a recently emptied shell. However, in the peace and quiet of his aquarium, Cassiodorus took a minute or two to decide he liked his old shell better and transferred back without having to rebuff any would-be switchers.
They aren't cuddly pets. But they sure can be fun to watch.
We were walking through the mall toward the bookstore and we passed a table covered in blue sand and dotted with shells. Kip wanted to stop and look, and it quickly became apparent that some of the shells had legs and were walking around. The longer we watched, the neater they seemed. We went off to the bookstore, then dropped by the pet store and found a book on hermit crabs, then went back to the crab table, and chose a couple, with help from the book.
They are very cool. We got a 10 gallon aquarium and put 25 pounds of pea gravel in the bottom (hermit crabs like to be able to bury themselves once in a while) and added a bit of rotten log and a piece of bark for them to climb on (they love to climb) and generally set it up for them. When it gets colder we'll need to get an under-tank warming pad to keep them at about 75 degrees.
It turns out that the name hermit-crab is a misnomer--they run around in packs of a dozen to over a hundred and a lone hermit crab is not a very happy creature. Therefore we got two. We named one Julian of Norwich and the other one Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus is the more outgoing of the two. We refer to them as "she" (Julian) and "he" (Cassiodorus) but these are entirely theoretical constructs for our psychological and linguistic comfort--it is practically impossible for a human to determine the gender of a live hermit crab. Somehow the crabs know, which is the important thing. For our practical purposes it doesn't matter; hermit crab eggs will only hatch in the sea.
We got extra shells for them so they wouldn't be shell-less when they outgrew their present homes, and the first thing Cassiodorus did when we got them home was try on another shell. He picked it up in his second pair of legs (the claws are considered the first pair) and turned it over and over, checking it out from every side; he tucked his antennae in the opening, and then (briefly) his eyestalks; he felt inside with his claws. Several times he moved up to the edge of his present shell, so that we could see his fourth and fifth pairs of legs, which are much smaller than the second and third pair and much lighter colored, but retreated into his original shell again. Finally he went for it, hurriedly transferring his soft white abdomen (longer than I'd expected; kind of like a wasp's) to the new shell.
Then he walked around in his new shell, turning it this way and that, and patting it, over his shoulders, with his antennae, as if to check out how far it extended behind him. Kip, watching, said "does this shell make my butt look big?" But the whole time he was trying on the new shell he kept one leg in his old shell, as if he were afraid some crab would come along and steal it. This paranoia is understandable; in the wild, shells are in high demand, and unattended shells are quickly snapped up. Finding a single new shell can lead to a massive swap-fest as crab after crab switches to a recently emptied shell. However, in the peace and quiet of his aquarium, Cassiodorus took a minute or two to decide he liked his old shell better and transferred back without having to rebuff any would-be switchers.
They aren't cuddly pets. But they sure can be fun to watch.
