Dodged a Bullet

About ten years ago Andy was playing AA baseball in Texas. I had gone on a road trip with him to Frisco, Texas and sometime during that trip one of our friends (on the team) had been gifted a hermit crab in an adorable baseball shell.

After the games were finished there, the team was continuing on with the road trip and I was flying home to El Paso.

It was determined by the fellas that the best thing for all parties was to send the crab home with me.

Because, you know, JESSIE WILL DO IT.

Now, this was after September 11th, so I had no idea if it was even possible for me to walk onto a plane with this thing in my hand. I made it to the security line where the guy stared at me, sighed and asked

Can I put it through the scanner or will that fry it?

I don't know.

Well, what should I do?

I don't know.

Then we just stared at each other for a while and I tried to act like I cared but the phrase

THIS IS NOT EVEN MY CRAB

kept rolling through my mind.

Pretty sure the last thing you want to do in an airport is suggest that you're carrying something that someone else asked you to tote around for them.

Please keep an eye on your personal belongings at all times.

He ended up wanding Mr. Crab, and surmising he had no plans to take over the plane, allowed us to board the flight.

I then read entirely too much about the species and stressed for four days. The room must never fall below 75* or 70% humidity. Always remove chlorine from their water. Be sure to put a sponge in the water so they don't drown. Never put anything metal in their crabitats or they will surely die a horrible death involving sores and molting.

I stopped reading when it launched into how to bathe a hermit crab.

Really? All I wanted was for it to be NOT DEAD when I returned him to his owner.

Also, fun tidbit, hermit crabs are nocturnal. Which is fancy for they don't sleep at night. They do however, enjoy digging and making scratching noises on the side of their little plastic houses. This is not at all creepy and will not send a scared girly girl grown woman tip -toeing through her apartment with hairspray and a flashlight as her only weapons.

Thankfully, the crab lived, despite my lack of dechlorinated water and after a few days I was able to wipe the emotional stress from my memory.

Until the girls started preschool this fall and there was a sign up sheet to take the class pets home.

Well, crab(s).

I managed to put it off until December. The twins were overly enthusiastic about the feeding and watering of the crabs for about seven minutes. One of the crabs just stayed in the same corner the whole weekend. I gave it a few pep talks and threatened to kill it if it died. We all survived and I breathed a sigh of relief when I carried that glass container back into the girls school.

And all was well in class pet land.

Until yesterday.

When I was dropping the girls off at preschool their sweet teacher was standing at the check-in counter holding a little sign and looking sad. At first glance, I thought it said

the carbs died.

Which made me want to shout hallelujah! because this mama loves bread.

But then she noticed she was holding it upside down and when she righted it I realized it said

the crabs died.

I immediately had a thought or three:

A) Thank the Lord that didn't happen on my watch.

B) Bummer about carbs still being alive.

C) Maybe I should be tested for dyslexia.

Let's be honest, hermit crabs seem like a low maintenance, fun way to ease into the whole pet ownership thing.

I'm here to tell you we should just leave them in their natural habitat.

At the mall.