Critters

A week ago today I would have told you that my boys would never have a pet.  And, I would have been wrong.  You see, Tyler has been creek stomping lately.  A lot.  He's been making "tanks" out of... well... garbage.  See?

Then, he puts creek creatures like snails in the tank.  This had been going on for a couple of weeks.  Something unfortunate usually happens to the creature.  It gets released back into the creek mysteriously, or it dies... or, it escapes which is what happened last Monday.

I got home from work to find Tyler in tears over the loss of his most recent pet.  He got me. Without thinking about what I was doing, I quickly asked Dan what he thought about hermit crabs. Unfortunately he agreed that we needed to do something about Tyler and his quest for a pet.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Off to the pet stores (yes, plural) we went.  By this point Tyler was beside himself with excitement so when I realized just how creepy these things were there was no turning back.  We went home that night with one hermit crab and a small crabitat.  Meet "Hermie."  Creative name, huh??

Do you see those beady little eyes.  Yikes!!  

Like anything else in our world, I then began my research and discovered that the small crabitat wasn't sufficient.  I also realized that these crabs are social so we should have more than one.  So... meet "Cheetah Craby" as Ryan name him due to the speckles on his shell.

Here we are less than a week later with a 10 gallon crabitat and two resident crabs.  I am incredibly creeped out by having these things in our house.  We do have a mesh top for the tank and put a good sized rock on top to prevent escapes.  But, that hasn't stopped my nightmares.  I have literally woken up each of the last three nights convinced that one of these little buggers was crawling on me!!  Friday night I jumped out of bed and turned on the overhead light in our room.  Poor Dan.  Thursday night I actually came downstairs twice just to make sure the crab (we only had one at the time) was still in the crabitat.  By last night I was able to keep myself calm when I woke up.  Hopefully tonight I can get a full night of sleep.

Our crabs live in style with fresh and salt water, food that includes carrots, cantalope, cucumber, grapes and all sorts of other good stuff, driftwood for climbing and a hut for hiding.  They need some extra shells so we'll add those this week.  

I have officially turned over their care to Tyler.  He knows to clean out their water bowls and food bowl daily plus spritz the tank.  I'm hoping that by removing myself from the process I might be able to sleep again.  I have already asked daycare if they're open to a classroom pet if this doesn't work out.

Shudder!