Hermes

Benjamin got his hermit crab—Poseidon—about two weeks ago and we've been meaning to pick up a friend for it ever since...but life has just been so...busy. Andrew and I have a lot of work projects and swim team was coming to a close and Alexander had pneumonia and the girls are off to FSY and...I dunno...getting to the pet store just felt a little hard.

But then yesterday we were driving home from the road race and I hopped on Facebook and saw that someone was giving away a full hermit crab set up—the tank, the crabs, everything. So I said we were interested and...the next thing I know we're bringing home a 20-gallon tank stocked with three new friends for Poseidon (they said it was four...but we only found three crabs and the, uh, remnants of a fourth).

Benjamin was over the moon!

And Poseidon seemed happy to have some crabs to talk to, though he's so much smaller than these other crabs (that are around 5 years old), so we're a little worried about him in that great big tank.

Here are the three crabs in the carrying case while Benjamin was making sure their tank was set up nicely.

They're pretty good pals, these three crabs, but we've seen them interacting with Poseidon a bit as well.

We do worry about Poseidon getting his fair share of food. These three were all chowing down on bits of red pepper and a plum pit and Poseidon was just...wandering around the tank. And then last night I was peeking in at the crabs and the largest crab was just...sitting in the food dish. Like, he had moved in. 

So I suggested to Benjamin that he set up two feeding dishes because the big crab can't hog two feeding locations at once and that would give the littler guys a fighting chance at getting into a food dish. Hopefully we can keep them healthy and happy.

They fun and interesting to watch, and fairly low maintenance. Benjamin took a couple of them outside to crawl around (advice is split on this—there's a "yes!" camp and a "no!" camp). It's been hot and humid lately (above 90° daily, with relative humidity hovering around 90° as well) so he wasn't too worried about his new pets drying out too much while they were outside (and knows not to handle them too often).

Wish us luck on this little adventure!