Sending worm greetings for Earth Day

   This Earth Day column is a tribute to every nature lover who works to improve our environment. To the Georgia Wildlife Federation volunteers who will be cleaning up the Mill Creek Nature Center this Saturday (Info: cmarr@gwf.org) To my son, Leif, who was born on Earth Day and for two decades has cheerfully done yard work. And to the lowly worm that toils and tills day and night, rarely getting respect or recognition.

   I wouldn’t have recognized the worms’ worth myself had Brownies from Troops 1386 and 1471 not told me about their worm project.

   The girls grew worms in shoeboxes, observed their growth and researched how they help the Earth.

   “You can’t touch them because the oil from your hands can hurt them,” said Monica Markley, age seven. “And you can’t shake the box, because it’s like an earthquake to them.” 

   “They break down the bacteria in soil,” Said Morgan Swier, age nine, “and eat trash in landfills.”

   The young ladies even learned you can make a living with worms. 

   “A bag of worm castings at Home Depot costs $15,” Marianna Markley, 
age 8, informed me.

   Well, maybe that job stinks, but there are other ways that worms can make both your earth and your earnings greener. 

   Jimmy Anderson of Duluth has been selling worms for 46 years. 

   Some of the hundred thousand or so worms he sells each week are the domestic variety like red wigglers and wax worms from beehives that he buys from worm farmers in Alabama and North Carolina. 

   Wild worms he acquires from worm hunters. In Canada, these adventurers go out at night with amber lights and a bucket strapped between their knees. They shuffle along golf courses and pastures grabbing up night crawlers and throwing them into their buckets. In Florida worm hunters stalk pink worms. They drive an eighteen-inch stake about a foot into the ground, then rub a dull saw blade across it to vibrate the worms to the surface. The technique is called “grunting” from which we get the term “gruntwork.”

   If the hands-on approach to worms doesn’t appeal to you, you can always just hand them over to buyers like Anderson does. Herbert Hunter, owner of Quik Bite in Winder retired 15 years ago and has supplemented his income with worms ever since. “It keeps me active,” said Hunter, who was never much of a slacker. Among other life accomplishments, the octogenarian proudly recalled his role as a transportation expert in the Normandy Invasion in 1944.

   Just down the street at the Happy Hooker, Carol Ann Soukup-Grealish has been selling worms for 25 years to local residents who put them on fishhooks and in flower beds and compost piles. 

   This Earth Day, you may not want to hug a worm, but if you see one, I hope it at least gives you a warm feeling.

042005

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