The year 2020 will be remembered for a litany of events we could not have imagined. Our decision to remain in Grenada for its entirety offered the opportunity to live completely removed from the pain and suffering around the world.

Our personal lives oscillate minute by minute, day by day, month by month, between the opportunity of “Living in the Moment” and the depths of despair for our fellow humans, the world, and our country. How is it that we remain so personally protected amid such suffering? Our hearts break at the thought of how much has been damaged and lost.

New Beginnings

Today is January 19th. The inauguration of the 46th president of the United States will take place tomorrow. Vaccines to protect the world from Covid 19 are being manufactured and distributed. It truly is the beginning of the end of this nightmare.

Living in the Moment

Our interest in the lives and habits of hermit crabs on Sandy Island has not waned. We have written previously about these beautiful and interesting creatures Footprints in the Sand on Sandy Island. We continue to learn more.

Hermit crabs need fresh water and carry a supply around within their shells. After a rain they generally appear much earlier in the day and you may see them replenishing their supply from vegetation and objects that have accumulated it.

Hermit crabs are the primary reason almost all coconuts found on the ground in Sandy Island have holes in them and are eaten out. It is remarkable that they can tear through the thick outer hull and into the coconut inside. No doubt, the coconut water, in addition to the meat, provides additional motivation for the crabs, especially during the dry season.

We never saw them without the holes and thought it unlikely they could work fast enough to always get to them before we visited the island (at least once, and often twice a day). We knew the hermit crabs can climb the trees. We have seen them apparently sheltering in the burlap-like material that is wrapped around the trees towards the top.

We were fairly certain the crabs must drill and eat out the coconuts while they were still on the tree. We went in search of hermit crabs eating coconuts up in the trees.

First, let us confirm that there are many hermit crabs in the coconut trees. Once we started looking we found them climbing the trees and eating the coconut flowers, as well as the immature coconuts.

And they can climb pretty fast.

And we also saw immature coconuts still in the tree that had already been eaten out.

This concludes our chapter of Living in the Moment – “Mystery of the Lack of Mature Coconuts on Sandy Island” – SOLVED.