A House Built on Sand

This is the house that I built.
These are the crabs that live in their shells,
in the house that I built.
There is the water mister, the bath salts, the crabby bon-bons
that belong to the crabs that live in their shells
in the house that I built.
There is also the twelve dollar humidity guage
I watch all day
to measure the moisture in the tank
that belongs to the crabs
who live in shells
in the house I built.
And there are the five dollar coconut huts
and the extra shells
the dish for the salt bath
the dish for the purified water
that shelter and quench and moisten the crabs
who live in shells in the house I built.
There, on top, is the critter ball,
ostensibly
to exercise the crabs and their shells
outside of the house I built
and there also is the critter tank
I bought for 19.99 which came with a plastic palm tree
and which seemed like a deal until I got it and the first crab home
and made the gross error of looking up hermit crab care on the internet
where there is a whole culture of lonely and desperate people who live all alone with their hermit crabs
and have nothing better to do than maintain websites that lecture against keeping a hermit crab alone
in a compact and affordable critter tank which cannot hold in
uniform humidity of 70%
nor a minimum three inches of substrate
like we have now
for the crabs and their shells
who live in the house that I built.
Oh, where is the goldfish, the two-dollar goldfish,
for which we went to the store
to fill the bowl we already owned
that needed no sand, no toys, no climate control
like we bought for the crabs that stay in their shells
in the coconut huts
down in the sand
in the house that I built.

filed under: fluffdrivel, domestic, kidsTechnorati Tags:
hermit crabs, the pet store racket, sheer folly