By Karrie McAllister

In my last column I wrote about the woes of bribery gone bad, in the form of a hermit crab with a shell painted as the South Vietnam flag. I’ve decided to enlighten my loyal readers with what has since unfolded since we added the beach dwelling family member.

For the first few days we babied this stupid crab. “Would little Goldilocks like a piece of lettuce? How about a bath? Want to play outside?” After that we all learned that compared to other pets like dogs, goldfish, and even turtles, hermit crabs don’t tend to move very much. Plus the little buggers are nocturnal, so playtime doesn’t go well with a bedtime of 9:00.

Still we loved our hairless and motionless crustacean. We made sure her food dish was always full and we made sure she had the nice humidity of the ocean, even though we never really saw her enjoying it. Once we actually saw it walk to the food dish and eat—and the whole family was doing a happy jig around the kitchen because we finally saw Goldilocks move! What fun! A whole week and the stress of buying a pet, all for watching this thing take four steps and eat a piece of oatmeal. Yippee.

As luck would have it, the letter of the week at my daughter’s preschool was C, meaning she could have show and tell with something that began with that letter. The teacher gave us the OK for bringing in a pet, and I had one very proud and enthusiastic kiddo.

“C-R-A-B” we practiced over and over. We reviewed how we care for our oh-so-thrilling pet, what we feed it, where it comes from (South Vietnam, obviously), and more, so she and Goldilocks could wow her friends.

Early Wednesday morning, we packed up more junk that necessary and toted it all off to school, and I’m sure there are 15 four-year olds who heard plenty about hermit crabs. Unfortunately, seeing as hermit crabs aren’t much fun, they didn’t get to see much hermit crabs.

“She didn’t come out,” my daughter told me. “I don’t think she liked all the noise and everyone looking at her.”

It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I noticed that Goldilocks, dear, sweet Goldilocks, had passed away. I sent my daughter to school so she could show off her pet crab, and the thing was dead. Not your best show and tell item really.
When I found her poor lifeless body dangling out of her shell, I did the only thing I could think to do: laugh. This, I know now, was not the best response to your child’s first experience with the death of a pet and will surely take me out of the running for the mother-of-the-year award.

My daughter, on the other hand, didn’t take it so well. She wept all through dinner and barely made it to the backyard burial grounds without collapsing in tears. I found myself a mix of emotion—sad for my daughter and on the brink of busting a gut. But doing the right thing, we dug a deep hole beyond the dog fence and laid Goldilocks to rest. This being our first pet death, I wasn’t sure what to do, so we all stood around and said prayers and talked about the good things we remembered about Goldilocks, including: She never bit us. She was pretty. And that was all I could come up with.

Overall, I’d say my daughter handled the death of her first pet very well. The next morning, all was right again, and the excitement of Goldilocks Two was already brewing. I was happy too because Goldilocks One had died under warranty. At the pet store, however, they informed me that I would have to bring in the dead pet in order to get a new one.

Needless to say, I decided to shell out the six bucks for Goldilocks Two.
On the way home, grasping a tiny cardboard box like it was made of gold, my daughter says, “did you hear that? Goldilocks Two can talk! She just said that she loves me!”

I smiled because I knew that my kid was happy and every bit of trouble we’d been through had been worth it.

I just hope that this one lives a little longer, and I’m glad we’re done with letter C at school.

Postscript: Goldilocks II bit daddy and he dropped it on the wooden floor. It died the next day. We then replaced it with two more (trying to beat the odds.) Sam lived for one week, and Golden a whopping 5 weeks. Or maybe 4, it didn't move much anyway so we were never really sure when it actually died.
We will never, ever, on this green Earth, get another hermit crab! And my daughter is forever scarred, because she thinks that all pets die after you bring them home.
She is also known to boo the petstore when we drive by.