I spoke too soon; the white crab is dead.  We hadn’t really paid attention to it for 2 days because now that we’re finished our spring break, we’re back to a full schedule of school work and projects.  But we finally looked at the tank to check on him he was gone.  Hmm, could he be hiding?  We checked all of the shells in the tank and suddenly an arm floated up to the top of the tank from under a shell.  We couldn’t find a body but found another arm.  Kind of gruesome but something happened and its now dead/gone. 

We’ll have to head to the beach for some more critters.  Perhaps we’ll change out some of the water as well.  I’ve been wanting to release the urchins and the boys are getting creeped-out by the “hairy crab” which was a hitchhiker on a hermit crab we’ve since released.  It has grown from pinky-fingernail size to pinky size.  It moves about mysteriously and with imaginations flowing, the boys have talked about it’s escape and terrorization of the family.  Nice idea for a horror flick but no where close to reality.  I’ll humor them and let them release it this weekend.

Edited March 29: The hairy crab had climbed into a large whelk shell we had placed in the tank and wouldn’t come out.  We sat the shell in a bowl and less than an hour later we found it on its back.  It must have fallen out of the shell.  Strangely, even in water, it couldn’t turn itself over.  It was still alive, and just as creepy looking.  After taking pictures of the hairy crab, just in case we wanted to make a horror flick, we put it into the canal across the street.  Check out a previous post on my blog for a picture of a hitchhiker: https://lifealongthegulfcoast.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/salt-water-fish-tank-part-5salt-water-fish-tank-part-5/