Crubs
Crubs are a staple creature around town. An adorable orb with two claws, four feet, and eyes that pop out on stalks when frightened, the crub is mostly a soft and docile creature.
A crub is about the size, and texture, of a staxie egg, which may be why staxies find them so cute! Soft, squishy, and round, their bodies are actually large single cells with specialized organelles for eyes, claws, and little feet. Their tiny cuteness is why most stumps drag them around as a pet. Crubs do not really comprehend emotions like friendship but they will gladly follow stumps that provide food. Staxies usually don't mind crubs being indoors, but they have a smell of low-tide, which leads to most crubs
sleeping outside and not being allowed on the furniture. Crub claws and feet rotate freely around their body, while the eyes stay parallel to the ground. Their meat, as well as eggs, are a nourishing food for a staxie of any age. Their eggs are often simmered with milk for porridge, or eaten raw on toast. The meat has a nearly
jelly-like consistency, and loses much of its unpleasant scent once fried or grilled.
Crubs are sexless and reproduce asexually. Not all crubs can reproduce, only about 50% of them can, and those who can are often labeled as female for the sake of differentiating them. These "female" crubs have a two claws as normal, but one is much larger than normal and hollow
inside. This is called a scoop and is used for holding eggs and freshly hatched crubs, called crumbs. Crumbs are about the size of a grape, and have no legs, only little claws. Once they're the size of a tangerine or so, they stop hitching a ride with mom and start wandering the world on their own!
Crub bodies are squishy and highly malleable, this allows them to squeeze into the smallest crevices and behaves as rubbery armor against piercing damage-- their skin stretches to absorb blows and can simply push sharp objects away! The claw and legs, however, are hard like keratin and when a crub gets pinchy, it hurts!
Crubs will eat whatever they can find. While their diets usually consist of whatever they filter out of the water around the island, which in turn helps keep the waters clean, they will absolutely go for carcasses or leftover food they stumble upon.
Ranchers keep their crubs in large pools, which they often fill with any kind of organic matter that needs disposing of, including leaves and leftover (even rotten) food. They're a lot like slunks in this aspect, except that they are slower to get rid of waste and slunk diets need to be supplemented with fresh food.
Crubs eat by essentially rolling onto potential food and slowly dissolving it in their bodies. Crubs don't appear to produce waste so that's both a blessing and an odd feature.
Crubs also possess the ability to become boyant at will. This is done by evacuating water from their bodies and instead filling with gas produced by their insides so that they float to the surface. Since crubs cannot move once they are floating, this is only used in life or death situations by the critters, aka a weem was approaching or they got scared by a weem-shaped rock.