I guess I should summarize my holiday season first before I jump right in and tell you how I got crabs! I had recently met an AWESOME girl named Katharina from Germany. To the right, you can tell we had an instant connection! We only had a couple weeks, but we managed to pack in some rockin memories! We discovered just exactly what a "Jack on Crack" was and followed up our discovery with 2 more rounds of it. We danced the night away in almost every bar in Savannah. And finally, despite feeling completely lazy compared to all the people downtown who were doing the bridge run in Savannah, we had an amazing recovery morning at Starbucks. We used this lazy morning to have a wonderful conversation about life and love. I truly believe we may have solved every relationship problem anyone could go through in our 20 minute convo (if only we could find a way to follow our wisdom...). We formed a strong bond, sharing the idea that guys are much more fun than girls and jealousy is something that rots a friendship and stirs up buzz killing drama. Sadly, Miss Katharina had to go back to Germany and continue her life. However, before she did that it was obvious what needed to be done. We had to celebrate! So we celebrated, drowned ourselves in the sorrows of having to part ways, and celebrated some more!
With every drink we drank and dance we danced, I assured my pretty German that I would take her to her host family's house at 6am! We got some shut eye around 2am and awoke the next morning puffy eyes and all to start our journey. We had some trouble getting a cab to my car. Finally after walking a few blocks to meet our cab driver things were looking on track.
We were almost at her host family's house when my car apparently got the hiccups and then died. Thankfully it died only a mile away from her host family's house. As Katharina could not be late to the house (since her ride to the Atlanta airport was waiting there for her), and I could not be late for work (since it was only my 3rd week at my job); we had to part ways. As she walked a long dirt road to her house, I called a towing company and sat with my car. I waited 3 hours on that dirt road for my rescue. Finally, a man, who's name escapes me but beer belly and southern drawl I'll never be able to forget, appeared in a tow truck. As I watched him load my car so slowly I noticed my phone battery dying by the second and immediately, thoughts of movies such as "Wrong Turn" began to fill my head. I finally climbed in, thinking "oh well, here goes nothing" as I normally do in situations such as these. I actually had a disappointingly boring ride back to Savannah. I forked over nearly 300 for the uneventful lift. And I sat outside my apartment, now nearly 4 hrs late for work and thought how brilliant I was for having my car towed here and not to work (I work at Savannah Toyota). Yes, thank you, thank you, I'm a genius. I had to call my family and tell them that I did not have a car at the moment to make the trip to S.C. for the holidays. However, my holiday plans were not completely foiled due to an awesome friend, Miss Crystal North. Crystal and I have been friends now for only a little under a year.
However, we have quite the relationship. We refer to each other as wifey, and we suspect that everyone at her work believes we are lesbian lovers (disclaimer...we aren't). You can notice to the left, we rarely care what others think of our friendship. We have become each other's family in Savannah and that's all that matters. Crystal, kknowing that I had never missed a Christmas with my family decided to make a Christmas dinner and surprise me with an early morning Christmas gift! She knows how much I want a dog, but that unfortunately I can't afford one right now. So she decided to get me Hermit crabs, since they are less of a financial burden. I LOVED them! I named one Led and one Zeppelin. They came fullyequipped with a cage, green sand, a teal tikki hut, shell feeders, and a plastic palm tree! I wish this was the happy end to my holidays. Sadly for Zeppelin, it is not. One night I came home to my empty apartment. It had been empty since December 31st, when my roommate decided to inform me after a month of living in my apartment that his check from the army didn't come in and he could no longer afford the place. Yes, by the way, that IS in fact one day before rent is due! And remember, I had already paid for a car towing and by this time car repair.....yep....HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! Anyways, trying to stay positive, I bounced up the stairs, soooo excited to check on my little crustacean children. I knelt down to take a look at my babies. I wasn't exactly sure what to do when I saw Zeppelin laying outside of his shell. I was a little disgusted (i'm sorry but have you ever seen a hermit crab without his cutely painted shell???...yeah ewww). Along with my disgust though came concern and sheer panic. I closed my eyes and poked him with my car key (no not with my finger....again, have you seen one outside it's shell???). No movement. So I squirted him with water. Not even a flicker of from his antennas! I called Crystal. Crying, I confessed Zeppelin had passed away. She said "Don't do anything, I'll be right over." As I sat there looking at my dead pet, I thought well at least Crystal can do the honors of giving him the royal flush because I'm not sure I had the stomach for it. My blood boiled in disappointment of that thought. My friend gave me hermit crabs because she knew I wasn't ready for a dog....and I can't even keep them alive...and NOW that he's dead I can't even handle that myself??? So I scooped him up with a CD case, took him outside in the cold, and gave him a proper burial. Just as I was calming down inside my apartment, Crystal flings my door open and exclaims with a huge smile "I don't think he's dead!!!" She goes on to explain that it's part of their molting process. I interrupted her, bursted in tears and yelled "WELL HE IS NOW." Even after reading that the slightest disturbance to a molting hermit crab will kill them, we decided
that Zeppelin would be a miracle crab. We dug him up, gave him a bath, and placed him gently back into his cage. The next night my room smelled like dead fish, so I knew that only the miracle of decomposition had begun to take place. I buried him again, this time with a little more ease. I'm not sure what kind of psychological affects this has had on poor Led (pictured on right), but even with his cage mate, Marley, he is a little more of a hermit (pun obviously intended) than usual.UPDATE: I AM SAD TO REPORT THAT SINCE THIS POST, LED DIED. SHORTLY AFTER MARLEY ALSO PASSED AWAY. I WILL NEVER FORGET THESE HERMITS, AND ALSO NEVER OWN ANOTHER HERMIT FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE (OBVIOUS REASONS).
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