Do you love land hermit crabs? Me too! Help me raise awareness of these amazing little creatures. I wrote a children’s book about land hermit crabs that are kidnapped from a beach in Broome, Western. Australia.  You can buy it directly through Amazon or buy via this website with up to two week turnaround on delivery.

BOOK BLURB:

Rocky and Crusty are two land hermit crabs from Broome, Western Australia who are kidnapped from the beach at sunset by a hermit crab supplier who puts them into a box and sends them via courier to a Sydney pet store. They are very scared and huddle together, not knowing what will happen next.

The pet store owner opens the box and takes out Rocky and Crusty and places them in the glass tank. They dig down as deep as they can and hide. They are huddled together. After a while, they look around their new home. It is cold and overcrowded and there is nowhere to hide. They are cold-blooded animals and if they are not kept warm they will become inactive to conserve body warmth and eventually die from the stress of the cold.

They meet Ruff’n’Tumble who comes from the Northern Territory and has a much darker exoskeleton – outer skin – than Rocky and Crusty. He loves to show off and climb up the driftwood tree and sometimes makes a ‘PLONK’ noise when he falls. He just gets up again and climbs once more.

There’s Dennis the Menace, always into trouble! They also meet Barry who is deep red and comes from Northern Queensland. He looks like he has sunburn – he is so red! A few days later a family appears at the hermit crab tank and buys all five hermit crabs.

“Sean loves hermit crabs but they keep dying on him,” says mum Megan. “Hopefully these hermit crabs last longer.”

They are taken home to Sean’s home and the very small plastic tank is their new home. They can’t breathe properly because there isn’t enough humidity for them. It gets cold at night and they snuggle up together to get warm. Brr!

One morning Megan looks into the hermit crab tank and finds Barry the hermit crab has left his seashell. After some research and learns that they require more care and expense than what the pet store advised. She visits the Crabstreet Journal Magazine and finds a home for Sean’s hermit crabs using the Land Hermit Crab Owners Society Adoption Centre.

At Sharon’s, they are taken to the 6ft crabitat. The first thing they notice is that the sand is twenty-five centimetres high! Plenty to dig down in! There are plastic plants, coconut huts and half logs to hide in. The air is lovely and humid and they can breathe properly. It is nice and warm and they are reminded of their homes.

Read more about their adventures in the book.

You can now order “Crabnapped! A Land Hermit Crab Story” – a hardcover colour children’s book written by Vanessa Pike-Russell with the assistance of Geoff Pike, lovingly illustrated by Anastasia Obrucicova.

AUSTRALIAN readers can now purchase the paperback version on Amazon Australia directly [BUY HERE]

If you prefer a hardcover version (recommended) you can buy it through Amazon UK  [BUY HERE]

Readers in the USA and other nations can purchase Crabnapped via Amazon USA [BUY HERE] which unfortunately doesn’t ship hardcovers to Australia.

If you’re reading this and you’re a teacher, please reach out as I am offering a free PDF of my book for educational purposes and I have lesson plans available for your use for free! [EMAIL ME]

Each purchase will also be supporting Hermit House – a non-profit organisation with a captive-breeding program for land hermit crabs. From the sale of every book, $2 AUD will be donated to Hermit House 501(c)(3)

Hermit House 501(c)(3)mission takes seven parts:

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1. Establish a reliable captive-breeding program for land hermit crabs

2. Continually improve the methods for captive-breeding land hermit crabs

3. Mentor and support potential land hermit crab breeders

4. Educate the public on the capture and abuse of wild hermit crabs for the pet trade

5. End the sale of wild-caught hermit crabs

6. Preserve populations of wild hermit crabs and the lands they inhabit

7. Host CRAB CON, our annual, educational hermit crab conference

There are Hermit House breeders from the USA. Australia and a few places around the world are raising baby hermit crab eggs from hermit crabs that breed in captivity. The eggs have to be removed from the hermit crab habitat – known as a crabitat – and put into a special aquatic breeding tank called a Kriesel where they will go through several stages of development – from egg to zoea to juvenile and then air-breathing hermit crabs that carry a shell and then walk onto land. They are then raised in a crabitat with a substrate (usually sand and coconut fibre in a 5-1 combo) in a temperature-controlled environment with heating, humidity, the temperature in the desired range, etc as they are tropical land hermit crabs.

For more information about Hermit House go here:

https://maryakers.com/hermit-house-501c3/