In reality Bubbles died like five years ago, but still I loved him and it's a weird story. I just casually cared for an invasive species as a child, but we all had to have hobbies. This is the story of Bubbles from when my teacher saved him to when she killed him.

One day my science teacher waltzed in with four green crabs. She loves animals, so when they fell off a car of a fisherman she talked him into letting her keep them. They would have been killed and used as food because there's a ton of them. Instead she brought them to my class and one tank filled with water later we had four class pets.

We were pretty little and as a result we just guessed the crabs genders because we could. One was pretty small with a normal sized claw and then a tiny deformed one, don't worry we took extra care of him. We named him Little Bear. He was pretty small compared to the others, you could hold him in one hand. The others usually took two hands. I forget the names of the other two, but I think it was Big Bear and then our only female because we said so Wanda. I being the child I am immediately fell in love with a random crab, slightly smaller then Big Bear, but larger then Wanda. He was green, had claws, and was perfect. I named him Bubbles and the rest of the class had no say in the slightest. They named the others though, so they were fine. I only had eight classmates in my grade anyways.

Apparently how crabs, Bubbles at least, breathe is by bubbles coming out of their gills and floating to their mouth where they'd eat them and live. Whenever I'd stroke his shell he'd make a ton of bubbles, in retrospect he was probably hyperventilating, but like he did eventually calm down slightly.

They all shared a tank and little us said that they were like a family. Wanda was the Mother, Big Bear the Father, and Bubble and Little Bear were the siblings with Little Bear being the youngest. I would take Bubbles out of his tank, put him in a little container filled with water, seat him on the desk next to me, and just pet him during class.

I can kind of see now why I was bullied.

Eventually after probably like a month my teacher kept on forgetting to change the way. Basically it got really dirty and they suffocated to death. The water was brown and I'd beg her to change it, but she kept on forgetting and being busy teaching.

When we all walked in with our super cool backpacks because we were tiny children she broke the news to us that Bubbles had passed. He stunk and by this point we were keeping the tank outside. There was a little porch off the back of the classroom and my teacher just kind of stuffed him under there. Within like a week the rest of them died, but I will say Baby Bear as weak as he was held on for a surprising amount of time.

When I found out about the passing of an invasive crab that had invaded my heart HAHAHAHA I'M HILARIOUS I cried on my friend's shoulder. She thought I was laughing and started laughing too. When my tear streaked face looked at her she stopped it.

Moral of the story, do not house invasive pet species and if you do kill them in a more humane way then letting them suffocate.