Earthworms - Many Times On Trial But Never Convicted

Sometimes in life you can be accused and convicted of crimes, without a trial, just by rumors and innuendos. It is those unmerited reputations for evil that can be disturbing to those who really know the truth. So, I'm here to say what an unmerited reputation for evil the earthworm has had to live down! If any creature was thought evil, men call it a worm, and posterity asked for no further evidence of its villainy.

Forty times and more, Shakespeare slanders this poor tenant of the earth -- as a worker of mischief, or as the symbol of misdoing and of fatal melancholy. Some of Shakespeare's quotes?

• Vile worm
• Poor worm
• Viperous worm
• Gnawing worm
• Eyeless venomed worm
• Worm of the Nile (which means a snake)
• There is no goodness in the worm
• The worm is not to be trusted

So runs the master's pen for all of posterity, yet, Shakespeare was clear-eyed and accurate in all things he observed at first hand. However, he unfortunately took the worm's character at second hand, and lo, it was very bad. It wasn't his fault. The standard book on natural history available to William Shakespeare at the time, asserted that worms, "be full evil and malicious; some be footless, and some have six feet and be enemies to mankind."

Still, out of the very wickedness of worms, men were to distill antitoxins against "shrinking of sinews and biting of serpents and scorpions." Also, it was known that if the armor stamped upon worms, strained them through cloth, then added an equal quantity of oil of radish-roots, and used the mixture in the making of swords or daggers, "the same shall cut through iron after, as though it were lead."

"If I but see a worm, I have no appetite for the next three days," a lady once said, not realizing that but for worms there would be little food to satisfy her appetite.

How does that boneless, limbless creature, the earthworm, discharge its great service to earth, to vegetation, and so to all animals -- and to our selves who depend on them?

The answer is that it is a living mill, grinding up soil day and night, reducing the mountains of other eras, with the verdure and carrion of yesterday, to the fine compost from which all plant life springs and grows.

The body of the earthworm is segmented, ringed throughout, and through the interior of its long body runs the astonishing digestive system. The thin, pointed end of the earthworm is the head, bearing the mouth, which has neither jaws nor teeth, but a lip for grasping.

A muscular sac, called the pharynx, leading to the gullet, or food-canal, supplies suction to aid in the taking of food. The matter eaten, as it passes down the gullet, comes in contact with glands, not found in any other animal, which secrete a large quantity of carbonate of lime, and thus aid in the breaking-down process by which the food is reduced to digestibility.

From the crop to the gizzard, the meal progresses and arrives in the powerful mill, where it undergoes a grinding similar to that which the food of a bird is subject. In the gizzard, as we should expect, are numerous small stones, varying between one-twentieth and one-tenth of an inch in diameter. Many small stones must be swallowed with the earthy material absorbed in the ordinary act of feeding. However, a battery of stones is maintained here, jut for the purpose of grinding. They are, in fact, the millstones of the miller of the soil.

Having been revolved and ground in the gizzard, the food passes on into the long food-canal beyond. When all nutriment which can be extracted has been obtained, the residue passes on and is expelled from the earthworm's body, and issues from the opening of its burrow in what is known as "worm casts."

The earthworm has no eyes, but it has quick-acting sense organs. It can detect the difference between light and dark. It never shows itself in bright daylight unless it is frightened from its hole, or unless it is sick or ailing, or threatened by the flooding of its dwelling. (That's why you often see them after a storm on sidewalks).

With no nose, it can smell. With no ears, it can detect vibrations. It breathes through its skin. It feels heat and cold. It is keenly sensitive to touch. It displays a decided sense of taste in the choice of its food, showing preferences for various types of vegetation over other kinds, choosing the fat of flesh before the lean, and liking fresh meat better than foul, though not disdaining to eat the bodies of its dead kind.

In addition to eating meat and earth, the earthworm feeds on dead leaves, fallen blossoms, seeds and other vegetable substances lying near the mouth of its burrow. It draws the leaves down its hole in such a manner that the small end always goes first, so taking the line of the least resistance. Many of those leaves and other substances it eats, yet it will also leave it to decay and form new material for regeneration of the soil.

It is reckoned that there are about fifty thousand earthworms on average to an acre of land. It's also known that earthworms raise from fourteen to eighteen tons of soil to the surface every year, adding an inch a year to top soil in this way.

The thickened ring of color lighter than the rest of the body, near the head is not, as may be supposed, the scar of an injury. It marks the presence of a gland from which is poured out the fluid composing the cocoon in which the eggs of the earthworm are laid.

Eggs so laid produce little earthworms resembling their parents in all but size. There is none of the wonderful changes of form such as mark the career of the insects.

It is not true that if we cut an earthworm in half and apply the head to the tail, that the two parts will unite, though there are still people who believe that. It is true, however, that if an earthworm is halved, the head portion will produce a new tail. Yet, the tail portion will also produce another tail, but not a head -- unless the cut is less than eighteen or twenty segments from the head.

So, it turns out that instead of being the evil that Shakespeare and other misinformed herald's would lead us to believe -- that the defenseless earthworm is our eternal master gardener, who does in secret and in private, toil for all of mankind.

Out of sight and out of mind, he makes soil fruitful, fine and rich soil for the whole of our habitable earth. He is one species we cannot afford to take for granted or continue to vilify.

Most serious home gardeners know about composting and have at least heard of vermiculture --- which is the unnatural (artificial) rearing of earthworms (and some related species). There are many people who find this endeavor to be exciting and even profitable. I'm not one of them, although I do encourage others who are inclined to "go for it."

I come by my prejudice, not as someone who does not appreciate earthworms -- I do hold them in high regard -- but as someone who has been a little too up close and personal with the raising of earthworms.

It all started on the day my husband came gleefully home from an auction, waltzing in the door with two five gallon lidded buckets. Since he worked long hours on railroad freight runs, I was skeptical from the get-go when he announced:

"Baby, we're gonna get rich and save money at the same time -- we're going to raise our own worms!"

Well, I didn't have to go to college to know who the "we" was going to be in this new venture, since his off-time from work was limited to eight to ten hours about every third day. After examining them and reading through the "instructions" I started to take them to the side porch of the house. There was no room for two five gallon buckets of worms in our twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet square cabin.

There was an immediate out cry, "Oh no! It's too cold on the porch -- we have to keep them inside!

Well, he did have a point, it was late fall. I was not a happy camper about these new additions to the family. As a woman, it wasn't part of my decorating sense, that I would be facing having ugly buckets of worms in our living room/dining room/kitchen until next spring.

Finally settling on hiding them behind the couch and a chair, I settled into a peaceful co-existence, knowing that spring would come and out the door they would go -- forever if I had my way. A couple of months later, this whole earth worm situation came to a boiling point -- as this was the time my husband wanted to change their bedding was on a chilly late November day.

Close to sundown, after spreading newspapers out on the picnic table, he dumped the buckets out. The earth worms were smart -- the moment they knew a coat was required for this party, they burrowed deep and went looking for cover. There the two of us were, trying to find worms to go into the new cleaner soil, digging and plucking them from the dirt. We were still at it when darkness came, by then the temperature was below ten degrees.

My job was to hold the lantern, while he searched as diligently and thoroughly as only this farm boy does anything in life. Certain he was missing quite a few earthworms, the atmosphere was as chilly as the weather, as he searched and searched for elusive worms.

It turned out that the earthworms weren't any happier than I was with that very cold exercise in patience, frozen, most of them died. Later, after spring sprung, we had less than ten earth worms for all our troubles. We'd started out with several hundred in a bucket. No one has mentioned raising earthworms since, and a wise woman knows -- she'll be the last one to ever do so. I have no desire to be an earthworm killer again.