Going Commando

After a decade in captivity on my kitchen counter, Crabicus has begun to practice public nudity. The first time I caught him out of the shell, I thought he was just in the process of changing. Hermit crabs will discard a shell for a larger one as they grow. In the wild they will meet in droves on the beach for a big swapapalooza. These changings are part of a hermit crab's natural behavior. But in ten years, Crabicus had always been very private about his lower half. Then I see him just standing around sans shell, his pale lower extremities curled like an uncooked sweetrole. I leaned in for a better look, being curious about things I know exist in my kitchen but that I have never seen. My glance was enough to get him to scuttle over to a shell and crawl inside. That night I checked in on him and to my horror, and a little relief, he was hanging like an over-dramatic Shakespearean actor after a death scene, upside down, half in half out of his shell, motionless. Alas poor Crabicus. We all swarmed the scene to witness death at its freshest. We chattered about possible causes. The nudity? Madness? A suicide? I reached in to lift his corpse from his climbing branch.

Then he moved.

He hasn't repeated his death pose since, so I've ruled out Harold Chasen Syndrome, but he continues to go commando. We've pondered theories and have settled on this: he's an old man and, like old men do, he's just doing whatever the hell he damn well feels like. So my kitchen counter, between the toaster and the sink, has become his post-retirement naked room.