Star the Crab.

My first pet was a Hermit Crab named Star. She was yellow, with a purple star on her back (admittingly, I didn’t really succeed in name development). She was, for all intents and purposes, my best friend.



It was her week-and-a-half birthday. My brother and I were celebrating since his Hermit Crab, Superman, also seemed to be doing well. We were both ridiculously excited, thrilled that we had proved our own parents wrong and that we were succeeding in being rock-star parents. Hermit Crabs would flee from their horrible lives just to see if we’d take them in. We would, of course. We were going to house hundreds of foster hermits.


I was chatting happily, content with life, when suddenly, the crab in my hand wasn’t moving.


I glanced down. “Star?” I murmured, shaking her a bit. She rolled off of my hand and hit the carpet. She still didn’t move. “Star!”


I threw myself to the ground, but it was too late. My best friend in the whole world, my daughter, had died.


I don’t remember saying anything. It was a very solemn moment, especially for an eight year old. My brother and his friend paused; their faces froze, watching me hesitantly.


And then I started to cry.


It’s difficult to explain exactly what I was feeling; I was a dying doe, watching her small, rabbit child being raped and savagely beaten by forces she can’t see. There was no hope. Star was dead, and my life was over.


I was a little surprised by how quickly I came to that fact. One moment I was mourning- the next, I was accepting my fate. I stopped crying, and slowly prepared myself for live to be over.


My brother watched me warily. “What should we do?”


I sniffled, but tried to hold onto my dignity. “Bury her,” I said. “We’ll have a funeral.” That’s what Star would’ve wanted- after all, I was her mother. I knew what she needed. I turned to my older sister- she was twelve, and watching me with the same expression my mother gave the dog when it got off its chain: something near fear, but closer to reluctance to believe she was going to have to chase the dog down.


She sighed, without bothering to fight with me. “I’m building the coffin?”


I nodded. “Tristan, Devon, you two go dig a hole.”


“What’ll you do?” I wiped away a tear, thoughtfully. I was Star’s mother- what should I do?


“I’ll write a speech,” I decided.


An hour later, with Star’s lifeless body placed carefully into a decorated Kleenex box, I lowered the coffin into a hand-dug hole in my front yard. We placed dandelions- the only flowers that grow abundantly near my home- on top of the grave, and I hushed my family for a moment of silence.


“Star was my daughter,” I began, tearing up again. “She was my heart, my everything, and my best friend. And she’s gone now, living in Heaven, with all the other little crabs. Maybe she’ll see her biology parents” give me a break, I was eight. I meant biological “and sisters and brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles.” I took a deep breathe, trying not to sob. “I loved you, Starry.”


And that was the last time I saw Star… until Sorento’s Earth Day Parade, which I am not going to talk about today. 