Meet Our New Hermies! :)

Our family is growing! :) Three more little hermit crabs have come home to live in our tank. :) 

Since we were at the farmers market this morning, we put a bit of fresh celery, spinach, and yellow cherry tomato in with them on the ride home. It didn't take long for them to find and start sniffing around the food. :)

The thought was to go pick up one more crab. It turns out that we are not that great at getting just one. We liked the natural shell, but felt like it was important to get these other two out of those awful toxic painted shells - especially the poor little guy whose shell they artificially added to, to make it look like a baseball cap. 

Joe

I was of a mind to keep this little crab, and name him myself. Children come first, though, and from her first look at him Little Koala made it clear that he was hers. 

She pointed with her little baby fingers and cried out "JOE!!! JOE!!!"

That quickly, the baby had her first crab pet, and had given him a name. :) 

It turns out Joe truly was sick of his toxic little shell. (Who wouldn't be?) He got into the tank, and immediately began walking around looking at other shells. It wasn't too long (about ten minutes or so) before he found one he liked - a turbo shell - and flipped out of that horrid little baseball cap and into it! :) 

Since that first shell change, he has flipped again into a brown shark eye shell. The first flip gave us a good look at him, so now he is a confirmed male. It looks as though our tank is full of those!

You can see in this picture that he is still interested in the many shells around him. I don't anticipate knowing exactly which shell he is comfy in for a while. :) It makes me SO happy to see our crabs settling immediately in when they get home. :)

Violae Valuable

Giraffe chose this crab to be hers, and gave it the name Violae (vie-oh-lay). She later added the middle name Valuable. :) I have to admit, this is one of the prettiest shells we've come across in a store tank.

Violae was equally happy to get into a nice tank environment. :) We don't know if she is a male or female, but for now (and for the sake of Giraffe) she is a girl. ;) I'm also not sure if she will change shells, but I suspect so, given that she is in a pretty small one for her body size. 

Bootstrap

Last is Bootstrap. :) This is Hubby's crab. :) He is a bashful little guy, but has a lovely blend of coloring.

It was very hard for me NOT to take home all thirteen little crabs that were in the store today! 

The sad fact is that our purchases are a win and a loss. If we don't purchase these poor crabs, they may never again get a normal shell to live in. If we keep buying them, we are part of the demand that keeps people painting shells. :/

Like poor Joe, Bootstrap hated being in a toxic shell. He seems to be a bit more shy, and hid away until we quit gawking at him before slipping discreetly into the turbo shell that Joe had just abandoned. (At last count, Joe has now been in THREE shells in the four hours he has been home!)

I have a video of Joe flipping from the baseball cap into the dark turbo, but I do not have a good picture. I hope to figure out how to embed a video in the blog soon, but do not yet have that knowledge. In this picture, you can see Bootstrap now in the same turbo shell Joe tried on earlier! 

Well, I suppose it is high time I wrap this up. :) We have a love affair going with our pets, but I have heard that they can creep people out. lol I suppose I can understand that. Lobsters give me the heebie jeebies and hermies don't, even though they do share similarities. lol

I will end by showing you what our little lovelies are having for dinner tonight. 

I chopped them up a lovely dish of fresh organic bananas, blueberries, spinach, oranges, and cherry tomato. 

I'll admit it. I love spoiling these little guys! They can eat such a variety of things! 

I don't know if you noticed it in the picture above, but I also put a tantalizing little drip of locally made organic honey right on the rim. This is their treat for the night. They can have it, but only occasionally and in small amounts. Eat up, guys! 

Say, do you think this is enough food for eleven crabs?  ;)