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Hermit crabs play
Palmyra shell game

Wildlife refuges are often known for one particular kind of animal. Hawaii hosts humpbacks, Komodo produces dragons and the Serengeti has big cats.

Here in Palmyra we have crabs.

Crabs roam everywhere around here, from the beaches to the jungles to the corners of our office. At first, these ubiquitous creatures made me jumpy. The crackle of dead leaves around camp and the wiggling of ferns in the forests reminded me of velociraptors stalking their prey.

Now I know those furtive sights and sounds are only crabs scurrying for cover. To them, we are the monsters.

Palmyra has most of the crab types familiar to us in Hawaii. But besides ghost, rock and marine crabs, this atoll also hosts intertidal fiddler crabs and three kinds of land crabs.

Of these, my favorites are the land-based hermits. These crabs look like giant, walking strawberries, ranging in color from pink to deep red and having a similar texture.

Strawberry hermits, and their less common purple cousins, are smaller than the other land crabs, but what they lack in bulk they make up for in character.

In the comic strip "Sherman's Lagoon," the hermit crab Hawthorn wears a beer can to protect his backside. Hermies here prefer the shells of turban snails. The largest of these spiraled shells are about the size of an orange, just the right size for the biggest hermies.

As hermit crabs grow, they need larger shells to protect their soft abdomens. Since the number of turban shells is limited, these searches can be matters of life and death.

Hermits never kill snails for their shells, and make love, not war, in a group. But when push comes to shove, they'll fight one another for an empty shell or, when desperate, try to evict a well-housed neighbor.

Hermies have reused some turban shells here for so many years the exterior knobs have worn off many, leaving their normally bumpy surfaces smooth and shiny.

When growing hermits can't find new shells, some get creative. Hermies here are seen wearing end caps of PVC pipes, small coconut shells, and last week, one was spotted in a small glass specimen jar.

And if that image isn't endearing enough, imagine these plucky red crabs strutting around with tiny transmitters on top of their shells. Alex, my U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service co-worker, and I spent two days last week gluing tiny radios to 24 of these accommodating hermies, and we're now tracking their movements.

It's hard to live here and not fall in love with the little hermit crabs. Besides adding splashes of color to nearly everything, they're scavengers, as most crabs are, and clean up the islands like busy little vacuum cleaners.

We're fortunate these crabs are so friendly. About 100,000 roam Palmyra's islands, which total less than one square mile.

This wildlife refuge might be most famous for its large, endangered coconut crabs, but size isn't everything. Here in Palmyra good things come in small turban shells.