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Pastimes : The New Judge Bleonard's Assorted Reef Life&Bottom Feeders -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (57)	4/17/1998 8:35:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 174

THE TRUTH ABOUT HERMIT CRABS Hermit crabs live forever. I kid you not. They don't need food, water, maybe not even air. I of course, speak from years of experience with them. We were in a shellstore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There was a cage filled with happy, active hermit crabs which fascinated the boys. They cost us 2.99 each; we bought two. Then we had to buy a cage. And then we had to buy several new homes for them because hermit crabs are upwardly mobile and they like options. Little crustacean yuppies, always wanting something bigger and better. The kids were small-maybe 6 and 8. How much entertainment value does a crab have, you ask? Not much after the initial fascination with sticking your finger in the cage and screaming "Ewwwwww-he bit me!!!!"wears off. Then Mom gets to hold them in her lap all the way from North Carolina to Texas and tell the flight attendants not to worry, they won't get out. For the next several years, no one looks at them. A piece of lettuce gets tossed their way occasionally. A jar lid of water when there's some left after watering the plants. Then one day, we move. "Oh Wow! What's in here? Hermit crabs! Wow!" Damn things are still alive and well. They've grown. They're in the biggest houses now. One is wearing glasses, the other has a PhD. Life has gone on. We donate them to the middle school zoo, where they can live in the style such longevity deserves. Their new home is huge--the Park Place of Hermitcrabdom. We donate our little Baltic Avenue rectangle to the school for transportation. For about one week, the boys stop in and see if they're still there. (Where would they go?) But the gaping emotional hole the loss of them left in our lives heals quickly and we move on. Until these posts brought it all back. And I thought, "Crab soup...it never occurred to me."