Today I went to the fish store and bought a mini crab - he fits in the palm of your hand very easily - you could close your hand around him. One big old pincer and one small one.
I proudly take him home. Within 10 minutes of being in the tank, ** the little fucker has escaped.**
I was proudly telling a friend I got the little guy and she said, “You have to watch those things, they are little escape artists.” That’s when I decided to check in on the little guy and see how he was doing. That’s when I discovered it. I felt around the tank, at the bottom of the stand, trying to feel a wet trail. But the crab was too smart for that. I grabbed a flashlight and searched under the couch, the fridge, the bookshelf, …no where.
It’s a little creepy…knowing that the little fucker is somewhere in my apartment. It kills me how quickly he escaped…as if he thought, “You gotta be kidding me, putting me in here…novice.” My crab is Bond. Crab Bond. Any moment, I’ll hear his little crab voice taunting me, “You expect me to give up, Tibby? eh?” And I’ll say, “No…Mr. Crab Bond! I expect you to die!”
Speaking of. Just how much could a small decomposing crab smell? (pleasedon’tanswerpleasedon’tanswer)
The little shit is probably setting up camp somewhere along with Ralph S. Mouse. I’m expecting to see a little crab zoom out from the closet on a motorcycle and wearing a ping pong ball helmet.
This is disturbing…but I bought frozen blood worms to feed him. So uh…basically, that would involve setting out some thawed blood worms in my place. Not gonna happen.
I need to get a female crab and name it Pussy Galore.
There’s something so wrong with using the words pussy, galore and crab in the same sentence.
I don’t know what kind of crabs you have snicker. However I used to work in a pet store and trust me dead HERMIT crabs stink to high hell VERY shortly. Your’s will probably die in a vent, i’m sure of it. With its pinchers full of blood worms.
I feel for you, Tibby. I’ve had those things escape on me (they scale up the plastic plants and the filter tubing) dozens of times. Even worse, I used to own a couple of newts (Behemoth and Leviathan) who used to make a break for it whenever they could. As I recall, Leviathan died a natural death, but Behemoth escaped one day in my dorm room and was never seen again. Even when I moved out, I kept expecting to find a little mummified newt corpse, but it never turned up. But even before that, it wasn’t uncommon to look down and see a miserable, lint covered and most dehydrated newt sojourning across my floor. I’d drop them in the tank and they’d seem no worse for wear, but you’d think they’d learn. No amount of moving the plants about, keeping the water level low or Saran wrap and books on the top of the tank seemed to keep them in.
On the plus side, I never noticed any reek from my missing crabs.
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** Jophiel **, newts are the world’s most unkillable pet! When I was 8 or 9 I had one in a tiny, dingy and utterly unhospitable “tank”. The water was itself was usually so radioactively disgusting as to kill a lesser animal. Nate’s usual position was smashed against the wall of the tank by this huge rock I had in there. I would release him and he would wonder away, oblivious to the fact that his head had been bludgeoned in. Many times he would escape and once we found him days later on his back behind the TV, completely dried out and still alive. I had to give him away when I moved. He lived with a friend of mine until, terrified by his supernatural powers, she donated to a nearby elementary school. I bet ya he and Behemoth are still out there somewhere.
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Well, I consider it one of my missions in life to inject surrealism into the everyday.
That having been said, I hope you find the damn thing. Clea and Angua (my hermit crabs) are looking at me with their very buggy eyes. I find this quite endearing.
After a major apartment hunt, Crab Bond was sighted. Where? In the tank!
I was so shocked. I ran up to the tank and he scuttled off into the grass stuff that I had bought when I bought the crab. He hid so well in it that even when I knew he was there, I couldn’t see him. I bought the grass originally for the baby fish - so they could hide from hungry parents. Looks like now they’ll be battling a crab.
Carina42, the popcorn shrimp thing made me laugh.
I had a tiny Chinese Algae Eater and that bugger totally disappeared last weekend. I cleaned the gravel - no where to be found. I checked all around the tank to see if it had flopped out - checked the water filter, everything. No little algae eater. I still don’t know what happened to it. With the crab ordeal today, I was starting to think that my tank was part of the Bermuda triangle.
That being said…I know fish are just…uh, well, fish…but I swear the little buggers stare at me and ask me for food.
I’m glad you found him! This has made me think about getting an aquarium again. I used to have Oscars. They really do beg for food - I fed them by hand.
The first pet my father owned (as a 30 year old man, BTW) was a turtle named Speedy. One day, my dad and mom decided to take Speedy on a walk in the park. And he escaped. And the frightening part is that I am not making ANY of this up. My father still gets all misty when thinking about Speedy.
When I was a little kid I bought an “African tree frog”. I saved up for a week for the 53 cents (50 cents plus 6% tax – now tax is up to 7 3/4%) to get this little thing no bigger than a quarter. I put him in the tank with m red-tail sharks and he hung out on top of the grass. In the morning I went to look at him and what did I see? A meaty little skeleton sitting up on the bottom of the tank with its arms waving in the current that was set up by the aerators.
