Poor Hermit Crab!!!

I spent most of the day over to Kelsey’s apartment, packing, sorting, and throwing away stuff. Moving day is this Friday. We are moving most of her stuff into storage. We won’t have room for all of it. I have a friend coming to take her sofa. The other stuff that we don’t have room for or we can’t find anyone to take, will be put in the garbage. I have been trying to find a good home for her 4 hermit crabs. I just wish the pet store would take them back. She had 5 crabs; one was in a smaller cage, while the other 4 were in a bigger cage. The one that was separated, had been trying to switch shells, and the others were ganging up on him so she put him in the smaller cage. Well then she went on her trip. I was going over ever day making sure they had food and water. Well I noticed one day that the one in the single cage hadn’t touched his food for 3 days. I didn’t think much about it, because hermit crabs molt, and when they do that, they bury themselves and can stay buried for 6-8 weeks. And normally I would have left him alone, but inside the crab cages were tons and tons of gnats. They had to go!!! So bought new substrate, took the both cages out on the balcony, found the 4 in the bigger cage. I then moved to the smaller cage. I sifted and sifted and sifted and there was no crab!! There was no shell and no body of a crab! O_O I was totally baffled! I sifted and looked again… nothing was found. So I finished up the larger cage with the new clean (gnat free) substrate, put the remaining 4 crabs back. The next time I talked to Kelsey on the phone, she said, “the crab must have gotten out” I said “there was no way, he could have climbed a slick wall and gotten out” I mean there were no vines or anything to climb onto to get out. Anyway a few weeks pass, and I was sorting and packing up the kitchen, and I looked down and just happen to look between the stove and the counter, and I saw this small ice cream cone shaped shell sticking out. I said to myself, “NO WAY!!!!” I got down there, wanted to pull the shell out but was leery; because I was afraid I would see a dead stinky hermit crab inside his shell. But there was nothing. So I took the bottom drawer out of the stove to get a better look under the stove to see if I could find him, again I found nothing. A few days later I was in the bathroom packing and cleaning, I opened up the closet door in the bathroom and on the floor way in the corner I saw something… I got a little closer; sure enough it was the missing naked hermit crab without his shell! I felt so bad that he had to die that way.