So, now that I’m back in school, I wanted to get Jack some species buddies. So Monday, my roomie and I went out to the local petsmart by the grocery store and looked. I must have picked up every hermit crab in the enclosure, and not one came out of his shell. My heart broke. I put them all back legs up. It took a couple almost 5 minutes to even flip themselves up. I wanted to rescue them all, but my brain warned me they might be beyond help, and so we had to walk away. My roommate, who I’ve been teaching little bits of hermie care to, knew immediately without my telling her that the enclosure was off. We were going to go to a second petsmart a little farther away when we realized we would be late for a dinner reservation with a friend if we did. So we swore we’d get more either Tuesday after our class or at the end of the week after classes were out.
Tuesday rolled along, and our joint class ended early. We had time. I asked if she wanted to go, she said yes, and off we went to the petsmart about an hour away. This was the petsmart we had gotten Jack, when we knew nothing about Hermit Crabs. We went in and looked at the enclosure, and it was pretty much identical to the other one. No one was moving, no one was interested in the fact I had moved them from point A to point B. So with a heavy heart, we left there too. I tried to wrack my brain for any other pet stores, as that was all I thought there was, when I remembered their was a Petco on the way back by the mall. So we figured “why not?” and tried it. The store was immaculate. Granted it was new, but not that new. I estimate it’s been open about 6-8 months, as their original location had closed around the time we left school last year. All of the enclosures looked fairly large, and we were hopeful. We moved past the energetic ferrets and the happily chirping birds (which looked like the enclosure was a little crowded, but it certainly is bigger than most I’ve seen in pet stores) to the back of the store. We looked at the fish. The fish all looked healthy. Good sign. We moved to the reptiles, where Petco keeps the hermits. They were in some high-tech tank enclosure that requires an employee to open. There, in three sections of the pull out tank, divided into about 5 gallon sections, were hermit crabs. They were divided into small, medium, and large. Made my life easier–I wanted two small ones like Jack. I looked at the gauges. 70 degree heat, 50% humidity. Not bad. I mean considering Petsmart’s tanks were bone dry. Plus they were at the top of the tank, so it could have been off. I looked at the conditions – sand, moss, two water bowls, food bowl… Nice. I looked at the individual hermies. Some were moving, and the rest honestly looked like they were just relaxing, not dying. Bingo. I called over an associate.
She opened the tank and she went to pick some out for me, but when she saw me go to stick my arm in there myself she let me check out the hermies. I picked up a couple with no results, and a bunch more than spilled shell water on me (those I IMMEDIATELY put back). Then I picked up this micro PP in a D-shaped shell because he seemed to active. I didn’t want a micro, but it immediately popped out of its shell when I picked it up (honestly, I don’t think he even hid into his shell when I picked him up) and stared at my roommate. My roommates heart melted, and I knew we’d be going home with three hermies instead of two. The associate went to go get what I thought would be a cup, but turned out to be a little cardboard box that transports mice (and made me curse the fact I forgot my 2.5), and I kept looking. I finally found two more that didn’t hide when I picked them up, and into the box with some wet napkins they went. We bought them and took them home, making sure the car was nice and hot.
After bathing them, I was able to coax them out of their shells enough for me to determine their sex and… surprise surprise, I got my first girls. Both small PP’s were females. The micro PP was a male. Seeing as my roommate fell in love with him, I let her name him. She named him Hank Moody, after the David Duchovny character of the same name in the Showtime show Californication. Neither of us could come up with decent female names, so we put them into the tank nameless. We’ll think of something.
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Here are some pics:
Hank
Size: Tiny
Gender: Male
Species: PP
Name Origin: Hank Moody from Californication
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Astor
Size: Small
Gender: Female
Species: PP
Name Origin: Astor Bennett from Dexter
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Sookie
Size: Small
Gender: Female
Species: PP
Name Origin: Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood/The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Sookie Stackhouse Novels)
Edit: After a bit of brainstorming, we named the white-shelled one Astor, after Astor Bennett (Rita’s daughter, and Dexter’s step-daughter) from Showtime’s Dexter, and the other one Sookie, after Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood.