how to kill hermit crabs

i have seven hermit crabs. i used to have ten but i murdered three of them two weeks ago - inadvertently. i had just given them and their habitat (sand and corals in a big cookie jar) a bath but i did not want to bring it in the house while it was dripping so i figured, why not put it out under the sun for a bit. i did not think it would harm the creatures. where i got them, legions of hermit crabs would parade all over the beach at all times of the day, even under the scorching sun. 


so i observed how they would take to the heat while in the confines of their cookie jar -- and they were having a fiesta! they were all over the place, zigging and zagging all over each other, more active than all the times they were inside the house. 


and of course i was elated. so. this is what you want? then i will let you have some more of it.


i knew the moment i checked on them an hour later - which would be around 11am - that something was wrong. HORRIBLY, HORRID ME wrong.


total death toll: three. the biggest (karl), the guy with the shell that looked like a ferris wheel (marni) and  a non-descript creature (so non descript i did not come up with a name). 


i learned that when hermit crabs die, they come out of their shells. (isn't that sad?)


pre-mortem, i only ever get to see the tops of their bodies, the nasty pinchers and monstrous head. these are the parts that look tough and hard. but the hidden parts that got exposed when they died were soft. like the body of a caterpillar. but deflated.


i lined up the fatalities and took a picture of them while husband looked on with disapproval. "are you going to blog about how you killed your pets?"


yes.