The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart

Author:Amy Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Stalking the Giant Worm

A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849

WHEN I BROUGHT my first batch of earthworms home and introduced them to the worm bin, I could hardly wait to get to know them, to become familiar with their habits, their likes and dislikes. The thought of hundreds of earthworms in a bin on my porch proved to be an irresistible attraction. I knew I should leave them alone for a few days so they could get settled—the instructions that came with the bin were quite explicit on this point. Earthworms, through their digestion, help create the kind of microbial community that they prefer. The organisms in their castings flourish and multiply until the balance of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi is just right. A responsible earthworm farmer will leave a new group of worms in peace for weeks while they adapt to their new home.

My bin came with a brick of compressed shredded coconut fiber, which expands once it has sat in a bucket of water for an hour or so. It loosens into a damp shaggy mass, losing its brick shape and taking on the consistency of peat moss. This is considered the ideal bedding for a new small-scale worm bin; it gives the worms something dark and damp to bury themselves in. They will eventually eat it. After that they will live in their own castings and won’t require any special bedding.

I should have left them undisturbed in this bedding for a week or more, but I just couldn’t, not even for an hour or a day. I was too curious about what they were doing in the dark, damp confines of their new home. I wasn’t supposed to feed them right away—they needed a few days to get settled in before they were ready to eat—but I dropped a banana skin in the bin anyway. Several times a day I would steal out to the porch, lift the lid, and churn through the bedding with a garden fork. The worms were limp, puny things that lacked the wherewithal to duck away from the light. They needed to fatten up, start laying eggs, explore the boundaries of their new world. I’d have to stop torturing them with the garden fork if I ever wanted to establish a successful colony. Looking back on those early days and the unrelenting, even cruel, nature of my own curiosity, I realize that perhaps it is best that we do not dig too enthusiastically in search of undiscovered species of worms. Our investigation of them could, in the end, be their undoing.

I should probably leave the worms in my own garden un­disturbed, but I can’t resist.

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