Crabitat

11:30 at night and I should have been in bed long ago. The Mr. is fading off to sleep but I am wide awake, albeit very tired, sitting in the easy chair and staring at the crabitat. I can't tear myself away. I have just given the Crabbs their tiny Thursday night gourmet special, broccoli, tuna and part of a past-it's- prime banana, with a little coconut thrown in for a treat. Bertha is, as always, curled up in her coco hut. We never see her come out. She reserves her late night foraging for the early morning hours while we sleep. Charlie Brown, so named because he came to us in a very blah brown shell, is the new member of the Crabb family. I notice he is snuggling up to the shell shop. I wonder what he is up to. Last night sometime he decided to upgrade from his Charlie Brown shell to one a little more suited to his taste. This one is light with dark brown stripes, still reminiscent of his namesake*. The shell shop he is snuggling with is just a small terracotta pot wedged into the sand and full of extra shells. I wonder if he would like to get in there and so I clear out the shells, stacking them on the side of the tank, and put a little moss in there for softness. I walk away for a minute, and when I come back I am tickled to see he has moved into the shell shop, now moss pit, and is snuggling his way all the way to the back. 

It's Little Joe (formerly Little Boy) that has me hovering around the terrarium tonight, though. He has been with us since we first acquired the Crabbs (Last June), however a month ago he disappeared. We searched high and low and couldn't find him in the tank and came to the conclusion that he had gone under the sand. We didn't know how long he would be down there, and had done research that warned against digging him out, so we just let him stay down and waited. And waited and waited and waited. At that time we only had Little Joe and Bertha. We knew it wasn't good for Bertha to be alone, so we decided to get a bigger tank and a new pal to play with. 

So after setting everything up and putting Bertha in with her new mate Charlie in the new tank, we left Little Joe alone in the other tank under the sand. After a month we decided we had better check on him, and so the Mr. dug around in there and got him out. And surprise, surprise, he was fine down there, and had apparently planned on staying a long, long time, because he had taken a cholla log down with him to the bottom of the tank...a whole log! Cholla is what is left of cactus when it has dried out. It has holes in it and the crabs love it. They eat it, and I guess that's what Little Joe was going to survive on while he was out of sight. But we ruined his plans. We brought him up and left him alone for a week to make sure he was all right. During that time he barely moved, barely ate. We worried about him. We decided to move him in with the other two and see how he fared. The Mr. carefully scooped him up and set him down gently in his new home. The other two were sleeping soundly in their coco hut so he was alone to explore for awhile. We wondered what he would do and we didn't have to wait long. We pulled up chairs to watch and the first thing he did was go for the food bowl. That was Saturday's special, of Gerber baby food pureed chicken, more banana and cilantro leaves, with a few ground up egg shells in the mix. To our delight he climbed into the food bowl and began to chow down and didn't stop for an hour. When he was finally satisfied, to our further delight, he ambled over to the hamster wheel and clumsily climbed aboard. This was the first time we had actually seen one of the Crabbs get on the wheel. Little Joe began his workout and after about twenty minutes decided he had had enough and exited the ride. We were thrilled. We had put a lot of time and work into making this crabitat something special and it was clearly paying off. After L.J. got off the wheel he went for a drink of water and we had to go to bed. Next morning, first thing, I checked on the crabitat to see what had transpired while we slept. I looked all over for L.J. but didn't see him at first. Then I spotted him, high up in the moss pit I had made from a plastic soap dish with suction cups. He was sleeping soundly, probably worn out from his night's ventures. Bertha and Charlie were, as always, snuggled in the coco hut. 

And he has been busy all week. He has gone from fairly inactive to the most active crab we have. He is always busy, checking out the shell shop, climbing the plastic canvas ladders I made in and out of the pools, foraging and climbing. I love to watch, which is what brings me here tonight. It just satisfies something deep in me to make these odd and ugly little creatures happy, strange as that may seem. I love to watch them play and climb and enjoy the little world I made for them. 

I wonder if that's how it is with God. He looks in on us enjoying the world he created for us. He feeds us and gives us rain, or water. He adjust things according to our needs. He enriches our lives. But unlike my casual feelings of affection for the Crabbs, He actually loves us deeply. He longs for us to know Him, but most of us are completely oblivious of His love and care. How that must grieve Him. He sees us working our tail ends off for nothing. Wearing ourselves out until we are worn so thin we just can't go on. He longs to fight our battles and give us some rest. If only we would turn to him, we would find that rest and inner peace we so desperately need. If people only knew the treasure found in knowing God, they would come running, like Little Joe to the food bowl, to satisfy the emptiness inside. 

Lord, I lift up to you tonight, those who are tired. Who feel like they are at the end of their proverbial rope. As they turn their hearts and eyes to you, may they find the rest they have so desired and the love they so desperately need. May it change them from the inside out forever. In Jesus name. Amen. 

*As I am writing this Charlie Brown has become dissatisfied with his new snazzy outfit and has changed back into the Blah Charlie Brown outfit he came in.