Home Run gave us all a terrible scare this week! Mrs. Derringer was tidying up the hermit crab crabitat to get it ready for the next student hermie vacation host when tragedy almost struck...
As Mrs. D. was checking on each of the crabs to make sure everything was in order, she placed Mr. Crabs and Ranger in their playpen. She had trouble finding Home Run- she looked everywhere! Finally, something horrifying happened: she uncovered a hermit crab's walking leg...and it was NOT attached to a body! Aggh! We were sure that disaster had struck, and something terrible had happened to Home Run. Our suspicions of foul play grew when we then uncovered a cheliped, another walking leg, and the entire body of poor Home Run! The shell was under all the pieces, and Mr. Derringer quickly scooped up the the ruins and some coconut fiber into a glass jar. We decided that Home Run must have tried to molt and not survived, and that we would give him a respectful burial later this week once the rain let up.
The student who was supposed to take the hermies home for the week pointed out an obvious concern: since hermit crabs should not be kept in pairs because they would fight for dominance of the crabitat, what if something terrible happened while the two were at the students house for the week? We were scared that we had already lost one of our hermie buddies- we didn't want to be responsible for a whole crab massacre in one week!
We decided to visit the pet store and select a new hermit crab to add to the group, so Ranger and Mr. Crabs didn't have to fight one another! Mrs. Derringer approved the new addition (which you will read about in another post), and the student and the hermies went on their way.
Mrs. Derringer came home and sadly prepared to perform a crabby autopsy on Home Run's remains to try to determine what had happened to him...and the plot thickened! As she examined the four body pieces and the shell, she noticed a very pale, squishy-looking cheliped in the shell! AND THEN IT TWITCHED! Home Run was ALIVE!
Upon further investigation (and after rinsing off the parts), it became obvious what had happened: Home Run was in the process of molting, and we disturbed him. We couldn't believe this is what happened- the parts we found did NOT look like empty, discarded shells at all! If hermit crabs are disturbed during the molting process, they can die: their soft bodies are super sensitive when they shed their hard exoskeleton.
Mrs. Derringer prepared the five gallon tank at her home to serve as an isolation tank, aka Hermie Hospital, while Home Run attempts to recover from his traumatic molting experience. After doing further research, she read that hermit crabs who are in the post-molting period are weak and very vulnerable. They may not move or do anything at all for up to two weeks! This causes many hermit crab owners to assume they are dead- including us! But the hermies need to stay still for an extended period of time to give their fresh exoskeletons time to harden.
The first day Home Run spent in the Hermie Hospital, he did not move at all. But the second morning, Mrs. Derringer found that he had crawled about three inches toward another shell, but he seemed to have gotten stuck or worn out when he tried to climb over it. She gently relocated him to a little hollow in the coconut fiber, and carefully covered him a bit with fiber.
We don't know if Home Run will recover from this traumatic molting experience, but we are praying he does!
