Murderer

So many of you know what happened today, but for those of you who don't and so it is forever written down in history, here goes.

Macy came screaming in my room this afternoon, "Smiley is dead! He fell out of his shell!!" The girls had friends over, Kaylee and Joseph, so all five of us descended on the tank. Sure enough, there was Smiley. We poked at him, Kaylee tried tickling him, nada. I picked up his shell and looked inside, nothing. The shell was lighter too. Macy cried for a while, then we moved on.

I started researching what to do. There was still another hermit crab in the tank, so I didn't want it to be contiminated. We scooped up the dead carcas, and I took the empty shells downstairs to boil them.

They'd been boiling for 10 minutes or so when Kaylee, peering over the edge of the pot, says, "Miss Jennifer, I think there was something in the shell." I said, "Oh, probably a claw or some dirt or something, " but went over to check. I looked in the pot, and gasped. I clasped my hands over my mouth and stared at Kaylee in shock. "What?," she says.

Yes, Smiley was in the shell. He had just shed his old skin, and that's what we saw in the tank. Yes, I killed her hermit crab. He was alive and well in the shell until I put him in a kitchen pot and boiled him.

Macy wasn't as upset as I thought when she found out--probably because she had already mourned for Smiley. We went to Panera for the baked potato soup she loves, bought a package of the Silly Bandz she's been wanting, and then bought a new hermit crab. Her name is Miley, in memory of Smiley.

And I have to say--I'm going to have nightmares tonight about this. The dead crab is a pale pink color, and I swear to you looks like a creepy alien. I can't get the image out of my mind.