Hermit crabs

A few months ago I bought some hermit crabs. I got all excited because I've wanted hermit crabs since I was about 10 years old. I got them a big tank, some fancy coconut substrate and extra shells, water and food dishes, some rocks and –most recently– a compressed coconut fiber wall for them to climb and get some privacy. Also they enjoy eating it.

But hermit crabs are vicious creatures.

You wouldn't think, looking at them, that these adorable little guys & gals will tear each other apart every time they get bored (or PMS or something) but as I type this, there's only two-and-a-half hermit crabs left from the original family of five. That is, two live ones and one that got savaged and ripped in half, and is in the process of dying.

I googled how to put a hermit crab out of its misery, but the only helpful suggestion was "shoot it".

So I'm just letting him stay in his corner of the tank until he kicks the bucket. I feel crappy because I can't help him, neither by sewing his lower body and missing legs back on, nor by putting him in an upside-down jar with a cotton ball soaked in that stuff we used to kill Mousey the Dissected Lab Mouse at school... (was it formaldehyde? I don't remember).

Anyway, I figured that if I take him out of the tank and put him in an old cottage cheese container it'll just be even more stressful, plus he wont have his shell to hide in.

I just have to intervene and scoop out his dead body before he gets ripped in even smaller pieces, the way it happened to Bobby last week when he got "voted off the island".**

**my Mom said that and it cracked me up at the time.