Taco the Wonder Crab: A hermit crab and the many times he almost died

Once upon a time, on a hot, summer day in July, I took the kids to the pet store and came home with a hermit crab.

I’m not sure why I allowed this to happen.  I wasn’t sitting around earlier that day thinking, Hmm, I don’t have enough things to keep alive around here.  Let’s get a hermit crab. Nope, that’s not at all what happened.  What happened is that a certain eight-year-old boy looked at me with enormous brown eyes and he begged.

I caved, people.

I’m not proud of myself for this but that’s what happened. We walked out of that pet store with a small crab house, four different shells (because hermit crabs change shells when they grow.  Who knew?), a fake log for him to hide under, tiny water and food bowls, dehydrated hermit crab food, rocks, and a sponge.

Oh yes, and a hermit crab.

He was promptly named Taco.  I have no clue why, but we also have a cat named Peach–clearly food is held in high esteem in our home. In fact, Ben, the fearless protagonist and defender of hermit crabs in this story, was already laying the groundwork for a friend for Taco.

“Mom, maybe we could get another hermit crab, so Taco isn’t lonely,” he said, on the way home from the pet store.

“Maybe?’ Giving indefinite answers is always the best in this sort of situation.

“We’ll get another hermit crab and we’ll give him a Chinese name too,” he said.

“A Chinese name?”

“Yeah, we’ll call him Burrito.”

(A good mom would have probably explained that burritos weren’t Chinese, but I was laughing too hard to do that.)

Once home, we get Taco set up in his new digs and I quickly discovered something about hermit crabs.  They are insanely…boring.  They do nothing.  They stay in their shell and sometimes if you watch them for hours and hours, they might move around.

Mostly, Taco hid under this log for privacy.  Once I flipped on the lights in the middle of the night and saw him half out of his shell—a terrifying experience.  The sight of his naked hermit crab body is still branded on my brain.

No matter what I thought, Ben loved Taco and so did Gideon. Gideon is younger than Ben by 17 months and has severe autism. He loves most animals in the “love-him-and-squeeze-him-and-call-him-George” Of Mice and Men sort of way.  He seemed taken with Taco right away so we spent the first few weeks trying to find just the right spot to put Taco’s cage that would discourage someone from getting his chubby little hands on a defenseless hermit crab.

But we had a few “incidents.”  One happened early on when Gideon quietly (but with intent) took Taco out of his cage and when caught, threw him across the room.

Taco survived.

Another time, Gideon dumped out the entire crab habitat all over the kitchen floor.

Taco survived.

About a month after we got Taco, Ben lost interest for a few days.  As in, he just didn’t feed him or bother to check on him.

On the fourth day, Ben came to me terribly upset.  “He’s dead, Mom.  He’s dead.”

It was true that Taco was not moving.  And, honestly, it’s not easy to see if a hermit crab is breathing.  All day, Ben mourned the loss of his hermit crab who still sat in his cage high on a shelf in our kitchen.  After my husband got home, we discovered that Taco had been moving around the night before (hermit crabs are not as quiet as you think) and so Ben did something amazing—he gave Taco some water.  Guess what?

Taco survived.

Taco also survived a weird worm infestation in his cage, a transfer to a new cage, numerous handling by grubby little boy hands, a forgotten feeding or two, and one more close call with Gideon.  I have to say I was impressed.  Sure, Taco wasn’t adorable in the traditional sense.  He didn’t play fetch or lay on my feet or anything like that.  But thus far, he’d been able to withstand our family. Probably because he was hiding all the time but, hey, this is about survival, so I understood.  (I’ve hidden in the closet a time or two so Taco and I had something in common).

A few weeks later, another drama-filled morning when Ben was sure Taco was dead.  I have to say it didn’t look good at first but, after some research, we found out that hermit crabs do shed and that if they lose a leg or two, it’s fine. They’ll grow back.   Impressive, right?

Taco survived.

Then the morning came when we were certain we’d seen the end of Taco.  Ben remember to give Taco food and discovered Taco was not in his cage. It’s not a big cage but it’s big enough to keep Taco secure.  There’s no way he could escape by himself.  And yet, Taco was gone gone.

It took us some time to piece together what may have happened.  Taco’s cage had been left down which meant Gideon had easy access to him.  The afternoon before Gideon had played in the kiddie pool in the backyard.  It was a longshot, but Ben trudged outside to look for Taco there.

“Mom!” he screeched thirty seconds later.  “It’s him. It’s Taco.” He raced back inside and shoved Taco’s very empty shell in my hand.

“Where was he?”

Through Ben’s tears, I deduced that the shell had been floating in the pool and that Taco was also in the pool, and not floating.  It did not look good.  In fact, it looked very bad.

A few moments later found me in my nightgown fishing poor Taco out of the pool with a spatula. We placed what appeared to be his lifeless, (ugly) little, naked crab body back in his tank.

“Is he alive?” Ben asked.

I shook my head.  “I don’t think so.”

Ben buried his face in my side and cried.  We left him in his tank (although I’m not sure why) and Ben kept checking on him every 15 minutes, you know, just in case. And then, Taco moved.  After first, it was a little twitch and then he clearly rearranged himself.

Slowly, slowly (I suspect as he warmed up), Taco came back to life right in front of us.  He spent the next 18 hours huddled, shell-less, against the side of the tank.  But he was most definitely alive! This morning, after another moment of panic, Ben found that Taco had set up residence in a new, roomier shell.

Taco. Survived.

So, if you’re looking for a low maintenance kind of pet.  One that has more lives than a cat.  One that appears to come back from the dead in near-death-by-kiddie-pool experiences.  One that’s ugly and doesn’t do much.  Then, you need a hermit crab.  They are like the indestructible superhero of childhood pets. I am now a fan for life.

I thought we’d all get along famously now with our miracle crab and go about life.  And then today, Ben decided he wants a pet tortoise more than anything else in the world.  “Ah, Ben, maybe another pet isn’t a good idea right now.  Look what just happened to Taco?”

“I know, Mom.  Look what happened to Taco and he didn’t even die. Having a pet is kind of easy.”

Oh boy.

What was your favorite pet as a child? Share in the comments below. Don’t forget to sign up for my coming-soon newsletter HERE.