Family Pets and Other Animal Stories

Well, even though they live at the beach, it seems that when hermit crabs are out in the sun, in the new glass aquarium you bought for them, they can roast and die pretty quickly. If you haven’t fallen into a coma reading about our summer of crab mishaps, there’s more.

Unfortunately, Princess Roundhead’s crab Woody perished, along with Sandy. There have been lots of tears about Woody and I admit I’m also pretty bummed. I left the house last Sunday morning to show a house and they were all partying as usual, and I came home to continued partying. Then a few hours later I told the girls to check on the crabs and Woody and Sandy had exited their shells and died.

I don’t think any of us had any idea they were in danger, and we all felt horrible. It seems it was the combination of the sun, maybe the glass cage, and that they were low on water. We were all very sad. Princess Roundhead loved Woody, and all this madness started because of Woody. Because he “needed friends.” Yikes.

We’re learning about loss though, and the girls are starting to understand more about animals. We went to Costco to stock up on food for the girls going back to school. When Real Estate Dad rolled through the frozen meat aisle and around the corner with Chubs in his cart, she was crying. I asked what happened and he said they passed the aisle with the frozen lamb.

Chubs made a proclamation that she doesn’t want to eat any animals. Well, I can’t blame her there. If it once walked, I don’t eat it. She was then able to use this to her advantage, as she later ordered a Happy Meal with Chicken Nuggets, but refused to eat the chicken. She enjoyed the toy though. She followed up by asking for a cookie. So we have some work to do obviously, but I’m still happy to see them forming their own opinions about animals and deciding what is right for them and what they believe in.

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