Another crab installment

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by hermit crabs and I'm sure everyone has had their fill. Nonetheless I'm posting about crabs once again.

Another perfect day at the beach. I found this confab of crabs and couldn't resist interfering with their lives, once again.

About 40 crabs in this one small spot.

Once again, a crab not in a usual shell.

Three of them weren't (in my opinion) properly shelled so I thought I'd try to encourage them to move by placing wonderful new shells right in front of them. It didn't work. They refused to move out even though one had a broken shell, one was too big for his shell and one wasn't even in a shell!

At about this time I noticed that a boat that had been cruising up and down the beach had dropped anchor at the "picnic" spot and to our dismay were actually coming ashore! Were they not aware this was OUR beach?

We had no choice but to pack up and move on down the road to this beach.


Unfortunately, for the crabs I had found an old pail and they were coming with us. I wasn't done with them yet.

Even under captivity they refused to move out. One of them did give a shell a very thorough inspection but I guess it just wasn't good enough.
 

The one on the left has only half a shell, the one on the right doesn't even have a shell and the one not in the photo is way too big for his shell. Eventually I gave up and set them free. All three of them made a mad dash away from us.