That's My Answer's Mingle
Yesterday I came home to a very excited third grader who was jumping up and down saying, “Mom! Mom! Mom! Guess what! Guess what! I WAS INVITED TO THE TARDY PARTY!”
And I was all: What is a tardy party?
Apparently the Tardy Party is a special French inspired breakfast for all the kids at her school who were tardy only once, or not all, during the month of February.
This is the first time she’s been invited. Which, of course, begs the question: Why is she so tardy? I don’t have an answer for that. She takes the bus every morning and I’m told that if the bus is late getting to school then the kids are not marked tardy. As far as I know, the bus gets there on time.
Anyhow. She was so excited this morning that not only did she get out of bed right away, she also helped give Phoebe a shower (poor doggy needed a shower this morning), got dressed without being told twice, and she packed her own lunch. I came into the kitchen just as she was pulling the ENTIRE loaf of bread out of the bread bag.
My daughter has three hermit crabs: Sheldon, Angel and Ginger. A few days ago Ginger decided to take her shell off and she’s been streaking around the crabitat ever since.
A naked hermit crab is an ugly hermit crab, and of course I’m fascinated by this because since she took her shell off she’s running all over the tank day and night. Prior to this the crabs just laid around and did nothing 100% of the time. Absolutely nothing. It’s very boring as far as pets go.
And then there’s the whole crabitat environment that we’ve been dealing with. One substrate is not like the other and we can’t randomly grab a brick of it off the shelf at Pet Smart and fill the crabitat with it. Trying to keep the humidity and temp levels right where they need to be has been a total pain in the butt.
Of course I blogged about the fact that Ginger is shell-less and was quickly contacted by someone who told me that a naked hermie is a stressed hermie and one thing led to another, I did a lot of hermit crab research, spent $58.28 at Pet Smart on crabitat stuff, then came home and worked on the crabitat for two hours.
Here is the finished crabitat. While I was using 100% moistened coconut fiber it wasn’t holding the humidity levels up high enough. This time I used plain old reptile sand at a ratio of 5 to 1 with moistened coconut fiber. Then I blended it all together, built it up really high in the back so they can burrow and lower in the front so they’d have a climbing terrain. They’ve got a fresh water dish for drinking, a sea salt bathing dish, a couple flat shells filled with food, a log to hide under, a fake plant to hide in and/or climb on (they are supposed to enjoy climbing), and then a lot of shells to choose from — they’ve had all of this prior to last night, the only thing I changed was the substrate.
And now the crabs are moving all over the place. Angel’s tried on Ginger’s shell for a while, then went back to her own shell.
You Can’t Make Me Wear A Shell Ginger
So far so good, this morning the humidity level was still at 80%, and the temps are holding good at 70F. There’s a reptile heater under the tank, we also have a heating lamp, but someone broke the bulb yesterday when she dropped it.
Oops.
My daughter made me this yesterday, but I didn’t color it until this afternoon. I really didn’t know what it would be, but I know her well enough to know that it would be something. She even provided me with the markers I needed to color it in, except for the black marker.
