HCA: Hermit Crab Association

What a shock I got this morning!

I fix breakfast for my elderly mother before I leave for work. My rooms are at the far west end of the house, and her room is at the other end and at the back side.

I was taking her tray out of her room, saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and ahead of me on the floor, just coming out from under her bed, was one of my crabs!! After my brain finally kicked in and realized what I was seeing, I took him back to my room, and realized that there was a small area on the back of the lid of the 29 gallon where he obviously climbed through. I have 2 blankets covering the back and part of the top of this tank, so he had to climb down the inside of the blanket, across my bedroom, across my home gym (past 2 cats), under 2 doors, DOWN 2 STEPS, across the laundry room, around a corner and under another door, to get to where he was!

And he must have recognized my footsteps, because he came out right in front of me, like, "Hey, Mom! Here I am! Ready to go home now!"

When I put him in the tank, he pigged out for a while, then fell asleep right outside the food bowl!

What an excursion he had! He will have lots of cool crab stories to tell around the moss pit tonight!

THAT IS NAUGHTY

<3 Gladys, Zeus, Maude, Tango, Pico and Paul! <3

That is quite the hike! Crabs do roam very far in the wild, so that hike might have been VERY good for him! Lucky guy!


Crabbers unite!!!

Wouldn't get far in my house. A 2yr old, 4yr old and 6yr old that squeal when the see them. Especially the 2 yr old. They love them. Plus 2 cats and 1 very stupid dog (right Megan? Lol) they would be discovered quickly.

That's hilarious but scary! One of my cats loves to play with empty shells if I set one down and forget about it, so if I had an escapee it wouldn't get far.

Yeah, Kelly, Rufus is about as smart as Thor

We found one behind the toilet once. Mr. Krabs is still kickin'.

On a more somber note, I came home from work early and found a shelless one at the bottom of the steps. Obviously that one didn't make it past the kitten. I got him in a shell and back in the tank.

They are amazing!

OH Noes! I hope the next unfortunate is better off. Sounds like your crabs have been watching too much Maze Runner. (Is it just me?..)
But wow, lucky find.

megmaholm wrote:That's hilarious but scary! One of my cats loves to play with empty shells if I set one down and forget about it, so if I had an escapee it wouldn't get far.

Yeah, Kelly, Rufus is about as smart as Thor

Hahaha!!!

hermieluv1 wrote:What an excursion he had! He will have lots of cool crab stories to tell around the moss pit tonight!

Wowee! What a brave little guy! Maybe he decided to try to locate that missing ocean . For sure the other crabs will be interested in where he's been as he'll be carrying different smells picked up along his route. You'd better hope that his stories don't encourage the others to give it a try :roll: .

What a wanderer! I think it is so cute that he fell right asleep by the food bowl like that...and that he came out when he heard you coming. Little guy knows where he belongs.

[quote="hermieluv1"
What an excursion he had! He will have lots of cool crab stories to tell around the moss pit tonight![/quote]



that cracks me up! before i had a better fitting lid on the tank at the school where i work, i came in and realized that jebediah was missing. he'd recently molted so i didn't think he'd dug down again and he is normally VERY social. so i took everyone and everything out and searched all the substrate. my heart was pounding and i just knew that he'd escaped and something terrible had happened resulting in death. all the teachers with classrooms around me began looking for him. i thought i was going to have a heart attack but no, mr. long found ol' jebediah two classrooms down from me and under a bean bag. i was crying. i left work to go get a new lid right then!

they have no idea how much we love them!

Omg, that is too funny! I was shocked at how fast they move when they are out of the tank!

They are like what we in the car business call "sleepers": you look at an old 4 door "grocery-getter" and laugh.....until the driver punches the throttle and you realize there is a Hemi under the hood!

I accidentally left my tank lid cracked one time after changing water dishes. I noticed it about 45 minutes later. I looked all around the tank and saw no escapees, examined the opening and saw no evidence of sand or anything else, so I assumed all was well and never thought about it again.

Almost 2 weeks later, my wife wakes me up in a panic one night "There's something IN THE ROOM"! We bust out the flashlights, pull back the nightstand, and find our dear friend Turbo trying to claw her way up the wall..

Our crabs are so nocturnal it's rare to see more than 1 at a time anyway, so we hadn't even noticed she was missing, but she seemed no worse for wear. It just proved that we had given her the right name.