Favorite Hermit Story

[ninjasgorawr]

Not exactly relevant, but I would love to hear some great hermit crab stories, and spice things up a bit . They could be about anything. Funny, sad, incredible. At some time or another, all pets do something that amazes, confuses, or makes us laugh out loud at. I know mine sure have before. Anyone else?

[HermitPaws]

Well my story is kinda scary at first but amazing

one day my crab got out and was strolling around the upper story of our 2 story house and end up crawling around over night!!!! Woke up the next moring to my mom screaming... my crab had falling off the 2nd story bacany!!luckly he lived. 1 year later he died.

[WizKidsMom]

My husband found Itsie (a tiny E) in the kitchen just last week. He was walking back toward the dinning room where the tank is set up. He must of decided the kitchen was not the place to be. The tank lid was open just a crack but that small shell obviously was able to get through.

Harry was found walking upside down on the lid of the tank. Just walking back and forth along the lid. After several hours, I put my hand under him and he just fell into my hand. I think he was tired of that exercise.

[Donna M]

My favorite story is when I gave one of my crabs, Shorty, a slice of an orange. He was under his hut. He checked it out, took a taste, and if you could imagine a crab making a pucker face, that's what he did! He reared up and jumped back as if he had tasted the worst thing in the world. He then took his big claw and flicked that piece of orange right out of the hut!

It was hysterical. I didn't bother offering him orange anymore. Too funny!

Donna M.

[Donna M]

Okay, since you asked......

I've only been crabbing about one year. My second favorite story is when I had switched to an all-sand substrate, and one of my medium crabs came up from a molt. Maybe this happens all the time, but when he came up all I could see was this huge "sand ball with legs", walking around the tank! It was SO funny to me! All this sand had clung to his shell like concrete. I've never seen a SAND BALL walk, so I had to laugh at that one!

Sometimes it's fun being a newbie, because everything is a new discovery!

Thanks,

Donna M.

[Hildegarde]

Can you take a sad story? If not, just skip to the next posting.

I had two habitats at the time. One was a 29g with an established colony of 13 crabs, 2 small Es and 11 PPs, ranging from medium small to almost medium. All of these crabs had been with me for over a year.

Late September we got 13 teeny Es and 2 teeny PPs at The Crabbage Patch. In the 10g I had the 13 teeny to almost smalls, along with 2 teeny PPs.

In the 29g my smallest PP was Spidey, one of my favorites. He was down moulting for way too long, so we tried to dig him up to no avail. The next two to go down were my precious medium smalls EEs Dora & Dorian. Dorian came back up, changed shells and by the next day he, we assumed, went down again.

In the 10g About half of the little ones seemed to be down and since Es wear such similar shells they got color coding, but I had managed to name 6 or 7 of them. Then I noticed that all the ones I had named had gone down, but the ones who were down were now up.

I had little Vet (Veteran) who was a teeny but I did notice he was missing 3 walking legs. So I put him in ISO. He was eating and we could see his track marks every day. Then he stopped eating the food and there were no track marks.

I had Vet in a kk with no way he could climb the walls, and with 3 legs missing and he being the size of a nickel, I knew there was no way he could climb out. This kk had the plastic piece ton the top that you could lift up if you wanted to put something in the tat, instead of having to take the whole top off. Sometimes when the humidity got a little high in the kk I would open the the plastic piece to lower the humidity. I knew there was absolutely no way he could get out.

When I thought he was down for way too long, I went looking for him and couldn't find him. I even sifted the sand and there was no shell or Vet.

I had my suspicions but my husband kept telling me I was wrong, that the crabs probably stuck to our clothing and got out of the tank. I don't know when he'll understand that the woman is always right. But another thing I noticed was the crabs that were missing were our smallest ones.

We started looking for the missing ones in the E tank. We dug the whole tank up and found not one shell or any signs of a crab - not even a piece of exo.

I was afraid to think my idea of the missing crabs was true, but it was.

We had a mouse in our house.

MIA: 29g tank Es: Dora and Dorian, PP: Spidey
10g tank Es: Silver, Koenig, PP-Peanut, Peanut-E, Vet, Gonzo, Unnamed: 4 Es (one of which was found in the mouse trap gooey stuff)

I'm so sorry I didn't do any thing to protect you. I didn't know about the mouse. You were picked on because you were little and couldn't protect yourselves. I made sure that no mouse could ever get into a tank again and I even do a daily roll call.

I have such a sad part in my heart for all of you, my beautiful teeny Es and my little PPs.

[WizKidsMom]

I hope you trapped that mouse!

[DaisyCrab]

My story is about my Martha, a medium/large E. She spends her time exploring ways she thinks will free her from the tank.

I had on of those fake brown vines that you can purchase at Petsmart in my big tank. I noticed some mold on it, so I took it out to see if there was anyway to clean it or if I just had to throw it out.
I left in on top of the tank at the time, as I had to run out to the store. I ended up spending the better part of the day out & about. I got home around dinner time.
When I came in, I sat on the couch to rest for a minute (being pregnant I needed to relax for 5 minutes), and I happened to look over and there was Martha, OUT of the tank, and sitting on the vine that I had left on top of the tank. She was just perched there, looking around like she owned the world!!!
I ran over and grabbed her, told her she's bad and called her a little witch then placed her back in the tank.
I clearly re-enforced the lid so she couldn't get out again.
To this day I don't know how she escaped, or even how long she was out for.

[krackersmom2]

Most of you have heard this one, but it was pretty wild, so I think it's worth repeating for the newer members.

The Great Shell Heist

My crab Baby did a surface molt and was looking kind of shrimpy. I was extremely worried about him and came home from work to check on him. He was completely tucked up inside the shell. Figured he was just chilling after the surface molt. After a couple of days, I noticed that my crab "Herbie" looke absoultely huge in his shell and Baby seemed to have shrunk......that's when I put two and two together and realized that Herbie had hijacked Baby's shell! Well, to make a long story short, Herbie eventually abandoned Baby's favorite too big shell. Baby wasted no time in taking control of his shell and hasn't left it since. Herbie is now known as the "big bully". At the time he was the smallest crab in the tank. My best guess is that he took advantage of Baby's freshly molted, low energy state. Bad, bad Herbie! Baby was pretty cranky for a long time and became a cranky, habitual pincher. Everytime I would pick him up, both pinchers would start snapping He recently molted again and seems a little more mellow....now it's another cab that's cranky!

Another funny incident I had was while I was crab shopping at Petco. I had a medium crab latch onto the palm of my hand and wouldn't let go.....right in front of the sales guy...I wanted to scream soooo bad!!!

[Hermie's rule]

Hahaha!! LOL I had the same thing happen to me. A large hermit crab latched onto my hand too and it took all we could do to remove him. I was almost screaming and crying at the same time. The sales person was horrified and couldn't believe what had happened! It took a large hoseing to make that critter loosen his grip slightly then the sales guy pried the hermie off the rest of the way. Needless to say that crab never made it home with me.