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Killer Be Killed
The past several months have not been kind to various non-humans who reside(d) in the Haus. I will eventually discuss some of our feline tragedies, but our first tale of woe concerns Killer, the hermit crab Crazy Gabi gave The Heir for Christmas.
Longtime Offsprungers might remember Crazy Gabi, my parents' next door neighbor who gave us rabies in the summer of 2006. A brief overview for those of you who don't recall this particular highlight of my parenting adventure: Since my parents, Mr. Monopoly and Mr. Mr. Monopoly, sit for my children when I am working and/or Clooneystalking, The Heir and The Spare spend a lot of time at their house and have thus become buddies with the young son of aforementioned next door neighbor Crazy Gabi. One day in 2006, when the boys and I were at the Monopolies', Crazy Gabi's son invited us over to play with his new kittens. Who promptly died of rabies, needless to say about ten minutes after French kissing my two-year-old, my five-year-old, and myself. After ruling out the possibility that we were the ones who gave the cats rabies, we were nonetheless informed that we had to spend our summer undergoing the notoriously grueling anti-rabies regimen of some seriously viscous concoction injected directly into muscle tissue with a jackhammer about five times over the course of two months. We are all permanently traumatized, but despite the fact that we have consequently spent the past four years cursing Crazy Gabi's name, she insists on her son exchanging Christmas presents with my boys. And in December, she gave my older one a crab.
Now, everyone from Dear Abby to Emily Post to Miss Manners to anyone with half a brain will tell you that you never, ever, ever give a living thing as a gift. Living things cost money, time, energy, and emotion to sustain, and it is not your place to decide that anyone else possesses the requisite resources to do so. Moreover, given her spectacularly sucktastic record the last time she arranged any interaction between my children and pets, you'd think she'd back away from introducing us to any other animals. But if that were the case, she'd just be Gabi, not Crazy Gabi.
NotClooney and I were thisclose to refusing to take the damn thing home with us on Christmas night, but The Heir's plainly evident delight -- he immediately blurted "My very own pet? Really? I'm going to call him 'Killer'!" -- held us back. So we gritted our teeth and delved into hermit crab parenthood.
Raising a hermit crab is harder than raising an Heir and a Spare. Crazy Gabi presented the crab in a tiny plastic tank; the Internets told us that hermit crabs need plenty of space and reported the ideal dimensions for a crab tank. The crab now has more spacious digs than The Heir does. There is also some excessively complex water formula that we have to concoct on a fairly regular basis for the crab to both drink and immerse itself in. Hermit crab owners have to provide numerous shells for the crab to cocoon in, shells of various sizes to accommodate the crab as it grows. Oh, and rather ironically, hermit crabs apparently enjoy company. The Internets recommended that we provide Killer at least one playmate, so we waited two weeks till we were sure that Killer would be a semi-permanent family member, and then we bought Squirtle.
And then Killer died. We don't know how or why; NotClooney picked up his shell one day, and Killer's lifeless body just plopped out, immobile and kind of gray. Of course, The Heir chose this moment to walk into his room. He began to swoon and wail with grief, banging his head against the wall and shaking his fist at God. He shall never be the same. And I have to admit, I got kind of fond of the little invertebrate myself. I mean, come on -- he was a hermit AND a crab, a kindred spirit of mine if ever there was one. NotClooney, in a very atypical fury, insisted that we were going to place the aforementioned lifeless body in an envelope and send it through the mail to Crazy Gabi. I had a better idea, though; I adopted her a small Eastern European child. Let's see how she likes it.
And I also made a killer bisque that night.
Longtime Offsprungers might remember Crazy Gabi, my parents' next door neighbor who gave us rabies in the summer of 2006. A brief overview for those of you who don't recall this particular highlight of my parenting adventure: Since my parents, Mr. Monopoly and Mr. Mr. Monopoly, sit for my children when I am working and/or Clooneystalking, The Heir and The Spare spend a lot of time at their house and have thus become buddies with the young son of aforementioned next door neighbor Crazy Gabi. One day in 2006, when the boys and I were at the Monopolies', Crazy Gabi's son invited us over to play with his new kittens. Who promptly died of rabies, needless to say about ten minutes after French kissing my two-year-old, my five-year-old, and myself. After ruling out the possibility that we were the ones who gave the cats rabies, we were nonetheless informed that we had to spend our summer undergoing the notoriously grueling anti-rabies regimen of some seriously viscous concoction injected directly into muscle tissue with a jackhammer about five times over the course of two months. We are all permanently traumatized, but despite the fact that we have consequently spent the past four years cursing Crazy Gabi's name, she insists on her son exchanging Christmas presents with my boys. And in December, she gave my older one a crab.
Now, everyone from Dear Abby to Emily Post to Miss Manners to anyone with half a brain will tell you that you never, ever, ever give a living thing as a gift. Living things cost money, time, energy, and emotion to sustain, and it is not your place to decide that anyone else possesses the requisite resources to do so. Moreover, given her spectacularly sucktastic record the last time she arranged any interaction between my children and pets, you'd think she'd back away from introducing us to any other animals. But if that were the case, she'd just be Gabi, not Crazy Gabi.
NotClooney and I were thisclose to refusing to take the damn thing home with us on Christmas night, but The Heir's plainly evident delight -- he immediately blurted "My very own pet? Really? I'm going to call him 'Killer'!" -- held us back. So we gritted our teeth and delved into hermit crab parenthood.
Raising a hermit crab is harder than raising an Heir and a Spare. Crazy Gabi presented the crab in a tiny plastic tank; the Internets told us that hermit crabs need plenty of space and reported the ideal dimensions for a crab tank. The crab now has more spacious digs than The Heir does. There is also some excessively complex water formula that we have to concoct on a fairly regular basis for the crab to both drink and immerse itself in. Hermit crab owners have to provide numerous shells for the crab to cocoon in, shells of various sizes to accommodate the crab as it grows. Oh, and rather ironically, hermit crabs apparently enjoy company. The Internets recommended that we provide Killer at least one playmate, so we waited two weeks till we were sure that Killer would be a semi-permanent family member, and then we bought Squirtle.
And then Killer died. We don't know how or why; NotClooney picked up his shell one day, and Killer's lifeless body just plopped out, immobile and kind of gray. Of course, The Heir chose this moment to walk into his room. He began to swoon and wail with grief, banging his head against the wall and shaking his fist at God. He shall never be the same. And I have to admit, I got kind of fond of the little invertebrate myself. I mean, come on -- he was a hermit AND a crab, a kindred spirit of mine if ever there was one. NotClooney, in a very atypical fury, insisted that we were going to place the aforementioned lifeless body in an envelope and send it through the mail to Crazy Gabi. I had a better idea, though; I adopted her a small Eastern European child. Let's see how she likes it.
And I also made a killer bisque that night.
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Comment by mcglory13 on May 14, 2010 at 4:53pm -
Hah! I had a hermit crab as a pet in college, I think I named her Janessa for some reason. She lived, like, seven months. They ARE difficult pets. Then I got a beta fish. He was the first McGlory, actually.
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Comment by NotClooney on May 14, 2010 at 7:25pm -
I think it is important to note that Squirtle is doing quite well.
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Comment by NotClooney on May 14, 2010 at 7:26pm
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I hate Crazy Gabi!
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Comment by Mamawho on May 15, 2010 at 6:00am
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My husband' s sister gave our daughter a fish for Christmas. I'm patiently waiting until she had a kid, who will receive dozens of noise-making, light-flashing toys.
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Comment by mightyninjamom on May 15, 2010 at 8:12am -
I think this is exactly why the Ping of Death was invented.
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Comment by Regina on May 15, 2010 at 9:04am -
We just lost our hamster, Genghis. I don't rec a hamster as a pet. They're nocturnal so your child never gets to play with them. They smell and they're cage needs to be cleaned all the time. Also, ours was not very friendly - he had HUGE teeth and usually liked to try them out on us. Still, I'm sorry the little guy died. It was not pretty. Think I'll stick to fish and dogs for now.
I had a hermit crab as a kid and remember it fondly. That is until we were moving from NJ to Nashville and I insisted on leaving it in the car overnight so that our cats wouldn't get it. When I came out the next morning it was frozen and the little claws fell apart into several pieces. EW!
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Comment by Hausfrau on May 15, 2010 at 1:24pm -
Goodness, y'all are traumatizing me even more.
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Weird pet death story - our 1st beta, Captain, drowned. Yes, drowned. He swam into his pirate castle and got stuck, and couldn't come up for air (they're surface breathers.) Before he died, we did have the chance to tell Roger Staubach that we named our fish in honor of his being known as "Captain Comeback.)
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Comment by The Oracle on May 15, 2010 at 8:03pm -
Ha! I mean, that's terrible. I'm so sorry for your loss. Also: Bisque! Yummy!
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Comment by StitchyWench on May 15, 2010 at 8:11pm -
Mamawho, we had a beta do the same fucking thing - it was a sunken pirate ship though. I thought for sure the cat ate the beta because one day he just disappeared, there was water dripped next to the bowl and the rocks looked like they had been scooped by cat paws. We cleaned out the fish bowl (left the pirate ship in it, and then placed it in the garage). Several months later, after Inigo died tragically, we bought a new beta, I went to get the old bowl out of the garage and found the dead carcass inside the pirate ship! I yacked a little in my mouth, threw away the ship and carcass and felt really bad for having been mad at the cat for "killing" the fish.
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