While vacationing in the Bahamas, author Barbara Kingsolver collects shells as a gift for her daughter. When she gets home to Tucson, Arizona, she realizes one of them contains a hermit crab, which surprises the pair by emerging from the shell and crawling around the table. Kingsolver feels sorry for the crab and is determined to give it as good a life as possible in the Arizona desert. She and her daughter buy it a tank, name it Buster, and begin feeding it leftovers.

Kingsolver notices that Buster spends long periods of time hidden and barely moving, even when enticed with his favorite foods or a new shell to live in. After a period of low activity he springs into action, running around his terrarium, moving rocks, and digging in the sand. She slowly realizes that Buster is living according to tidal fluctuations, even though he has not been near the sea in months. She concludes that Buster’s active moods signal high tide in Tucson.

Kingsolver uses Buster as a metaphor for her own life, as well as for human life in general. She left her home in rural

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