Paul J. Nash

On the island I live on, land hermit crabs are called soldier crabs, and their pretty orange and purple bodies are ripped from their shells to use as fish bait. Other than that they just roam around wooded sort of places and no one really thinks about them. So I was very surprised to see a whole book devoted to their care as pets and to find out that they sell for as much as $50 each in the US. Next time I'm coming to visit, I'm going to bring a suitcase-full.

I used to keep soldier crabs as pets, or at least I use to paint their shells so that I could identify them when they made their regular visits to the cat-food bowl. Here is a pic of really nice soldier crab and a not-terribly-interesting story too.

This book is recommended for people with money to burn who would like an ultra-low maintenance, odd-looking, quite unresponsive pet who will eat the garbage and will at some stage disappear and later, if you keep putting food out, reappear in a bigger and better shell. Alternatively, it could be thought of as a career book for those seeking to get into low-punishment smuggling.… (mehr)