My 3-year-old's hermit crab died Saturday night, and I had to break the news to him yesterday. I was a little nervous about how he would take it. He loved his little crabbie. And my daughter had a hermit crab die a while back and was nearly devastated by it, so I was not looking forward to this discussion.

The good news, from my practical perspective, is that we have two “extra” hermit crabs that a friend gave us, besides the three crabs we had bought for each of our three kids (minus the one who just died). So my plan was to offer my son one of the extra crabs to be his very own. No point in buying another hermit crab when you already have four of them, right?

I gathered the children together and made the announcement about poor little Hi-Tahn (yeah, that's the name my little guy came up with for his hermit crab), who had died while molting. They all looked at me in an “oh” kind of way. Obviously they were in denial, so I plunged ahead with, “We'll dig a little hole and bury him in the yard.”

We proceeded to the back yard where I dug a hole under a bush and buried the little hermit crab. The kids marked his grave with a few oyster shells, and we said a brief prayer. When we went back inside the house, I told my son that he could choose a crab from between the two unclaimed ones, Stanley and Zoe. He chose Stanley.

A little while later, my son said, with feeling, “That was pretty cool burying Hi-Tahn outside.” Okay, so he really just didn't get it. But at this point, I'm okay with that.