Hermies Are in Da Hizzouse!

After several weeks of playing possum, or hibernation, or resting, or whatever you want to call it, the hermit crabs have suddenly decided it's party time.


Summers (the green one) in particular seems to be up and running around regardless of what time it is or whether it's light or dark in the room. He had stopped the shell-switching behavior he was doing early on - until this weekend when he spent about 30 minutes trying out the striped shell AGAIN before going back to his green shell. Otherwise, his favorite activity seems to be finding out where the other two crabs are hiding and rousting them out.


If they go in the coconut hut, he goes in and evicts them. The rock cave (that Ryan callse the "Undersea Paradise) - nope, that's not safe either. Talky (the red one) even went so far as to barricade the opening with an empty shell, but that did not deter the mighty Summers.


So, Rocky and Talky have had to go in search of new hiding places. Here is where I found them last night:

This is the coconut mat that is up against the back wall of the crabitat. They climbed it vertically up the inside, went over the top and are now hiding in between the mat and the glass of the back wall. My favorite part about it is that because of the painting on Talky's shell, it looks like he's fallen there and is yelling "AAAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!!!"

Here's Rocky beginning his escape. He's clinging to the very top edge of the mat about to go over the side.

Look, Ma! No hands...er...claws!"

It was at this point that Ryan and I left for a while to go have dinner thinking that Rocky and Talky had finally made good their escape from Summers' over-friendliness. Unfortunately, when we came back 30 minutes later, guess who was up on top of the edge and trying to knock Rocky off?

Yep - Summers. So, I gently disengaged them as I was afraid that one or both of them would get knocked over the edge and get damaged. I had planned to leave Talky where he was as he seemed happy, but Ryan saw my "intervention" and decided to stage one of his own before I could stop him and took Talky out, too.

I decided everyone needed a time out. So, I put Rocky in the coconut hut and Talky in the cave and let Ryan play with Summers for a while since he's the most active and friendly one.

Next thing I knew, Talky had left the cave, gone over to the coconut hut and evicted Rocky. I decided at that point that they'll just have to work things out on their own.

In the meantime, Summers discovered a new hobby:

He decided to join NASCRAB and is practicing for the Crabtona 500.

KJ

P.S. Guess where Summers was this morning? Yep - he'd crawled over the matting and taken up residence between the mat and the back wall. He wants ALL the good hiding places for himself.