And Our Numbers Increase

No, I’m not pregnant.  Two is Enough in this house.

Two human charges, anyway.

But that doesn’t seem to apply to other forms of life.

We’ve got the three cats, as you know. 

And Cricket-Catcher, the Cuban Knight Anole.

And a tank of assorted tetras and catfish and swordtails and other stuff down in the basement.

And we’ve had a series of Bettas (Siamese Fighting Fish) over the years.  First Reddy, then ReddyII, then Bluey, and most recently (and briefly), Fire, who was overtaken by a rogue fungus of some kind.  Very sad.

Well, two things have happened since I last wrote about the pets.

First, we thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the Betta tank and let it dry out while we were away so that none of the bad little fungus spores (do they have spores?) could survive.

And the day after our return from New Hampshire, we welcomed Swimmy into the family.

Swimmy is mostly blue with reddish-orange on his tail and lower fins.  So far, he’s still alive.

But wait – I’m not done!

We’ve introduced a new life form into our zoo.

Meet Shelly:

Shelly belongs to Julia, and no, Shelly is not just a shell.  Wouldn’t that be cruel of us?  “Here, Julia, it’s your very own pet shell!”

No, Shelly is a hermit crab.  Shelly’s name has changed – first he/she was Shelly, then, briefly, Sheldon (which I liked), and then it went back to Shelly because, of course, all Julia’s pets must be female, at least in name.

Shelly has a lovely two-coconut home that Bill designed:

This cozy property features a main house,

A guest house, 

A recreation area,

And stunning artwork.

Now, if you’ve never had a hermit crab of your own, you might not realize how interesting they are.  Interesting, but shy.  They don’t like being watched, so very often, they just hide in their shells and don’t move.  When no one’s around, however, it’s very different.

So, just for you, I set up a camera to do time-lapse photographs of Shelly when there aren’t any people around.

Here’s what I was able to capture:

 

Yep, things are gonna be a lot different around here, now that Shelly’s in the house.

Comments

[RoseAnn]

I love the time-lapse of Shelly! LOL

[judith]

You are cracking me up!!!! The kid's had a hermit crab years ago. One day Jolea squealed that her crab had decided to change shells. Oh joy! He stayed in the same place for 3 days with out moving into his new shell.... yeah, he was a gonner!

[Jayne]

You know, over the course of my life Ive had all sorts of pets. Dogs, cats, lizards, fish, birds, and a step-frog (Bills frog from a previous relationship). But this hermit crab is causing me more stress than any of the others. Its burrowed down somewhere and Im not sure if its just snuggling down during the day and coming out to frolic and cavort at night, or if its dead. And I dont want to bother it (more than I already have) by digging around trying to find it, because I figure that would be pretty stressful for the hermit crab, since I (or my hand) is probably perceived as a HUGE predatory pentapod digging around looking for food. No wonder its hiding. If thats what its doing.