We've got crabs.

About a month or so into the school year, I had a student ask if she could bring in 2 hermit crabs to be our class pets. I told her that she could, and soon Kitty and Batman the hermit crabs (appropriately named for the painting on their shell) joined Sandy the Leopard Gecko in our class zoo. The boys in the class were excited about having a Batman hermit cram. Batman- mind you- has migrated into a new shell with a kitty cat painted on it, so he is now quite girly. The boys were not amused.

So yesterday afternoon I noticed that Batman hadn't moved in like 2 days. I picked him up, He didnt move. Poked him, he didn't respond. He just did nothing and I SWEAR to you he was staring at me. So I talked to another teacher who has a crab and she thought he might just be molting. Apparently Hermit crabs do that? So she came in to check him out. Picked him up, he didn't move. Poked him, he didn't respond. So at around 4pm on January 21, 2009, Batman was pronounced dead. I put him back in the tank, mostly because I wasn't sure what to do with him, and left for the day.

So last night, I decided that the kids might take the loss of the crab more easily if I bought a replacement. I even though about just telling them he had moved into a new shell, but then I decided that they're old enough to hear the truth, and I shouldn't lie to the kids in my class at a CHRISTIAN school. I bought 2 new ones to replace it to cushion the blow to the kids. One has a cool bump on its shell that the shell artist decided to turn into a nose, and it is painted like a pirate with an eye patch, bandana and the whole shebang. The other is in a Spiderman shell (I thought it appropriate to replace one comic book crab with another) and he is a BEAST. I'm talking SCARY big.

I get them here today and put them in the tank with Kitty and Batman's corpse. I changed the water, put in some fresh food, shifted some sand around, and all of a sudden I look over and Batman is VERY MUCH alive. He's out of his shell, not walking around or anything, but his antenna are going every which way, and he's just as perky as can be. APPARENTLY HE'S NOT DEAD?!?! So we now have FOUR class hermit crabs. F-O-U-R. Its a crab party in there. I think they could be having more fun, but they're hermits, so they kind of keep to themselves....