Miz Fancy Pants

Black Death (or the importance of reading instructions)

I decided this summer to start an earthworm habitat for our homeschool.  I had hoped with a few big squirmy worm friends we could gain a greater appreciation for the more humble creatures in God’s ecosystem.   To be honest, I also had in mind that we would perform some behavioral experiments on them using this great looking book I found used, Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method.  What a happy coincidence that I ran into this earthworm booth at a local Earth Day festival!  They were handing out FREE earthworm compost habitats for kids!  Mastermind was the only kid with me at the time and he was less than enthusiastic about it, so I got in line myself.  They were kind of smaller than I expected (kind of like ultra-fine angel hair spaghetti), but I figured with lots of TLC they would grow up the big squirmy pets I envisioned us naming and playing with and doing experiments on.

Since reading instructions has never really been my strong suit, I had no idea why they were motionless for the first couple of days in their new home on my countertop.  I thought being in the kitchen would allow them to feel more a part of our lives and we could keep an eye on them daily.   My concern about their listlessness led me to look at the accompanying papers the earthworm people handed out.  It turns out they were near death (oops, they go into shock and paralysis if exposed to light for too long!).  After finding out that little tidbit, I covered them with a kitchen towel and crossed my fingers, hoping for a recovery.  They bounced back, much to my relief, and I let them spend most of their time in the artificial nighttime of the kitchen-towel with just an occasional peek to reassure me of their health.  They were already stocked with what seemed a lifetime supply of food, so I just had to wait patiently for them to grow into healthy earthworm maturity.

What, me!?  Leave well enough alone?!   After a few weeks of healthy homeostasis, one day I was feeling particularly motherly towards them and thought I would spice up their habitat and their diets with a little slice of heaven- a perfect, fresh-picked, August peach.  With all this B-12 they ought to be gargantuan sized in no time- plus they would really like me.  I guess the delicate pH balance was kind of upset by this little addition.  Maybe this key information was also covered in the instructions (these were long since MIA in the black hole of clutter in my kitchen.)  What I thought would be earthworm nirvana was more like earthworm napalm.  It was really very sad.  Not one survivor in the lot.  I thought I would memorialize their little short lives here on the blog before I chucked them.  Here they are