DO YOU HAVE WORMS?

 Yes, do you have worms?  You better hope you do.  Worms are our friends.  No, not just to fishermen but everyone.  

I gave a fact yesterday that if you added up the weight of all the earthworms in the US it would exceed the weight of all the people in the US.  Let's all agree there are a lot of them but just how much do we know about the little creatures.  Here's what I know.

Earthworms might be the most important living creatures in the world - for our sake.  The work they do every day prepares the soil for vegetation.  They make the soil arable.  This is a huge service they do for us.

Earthworms have mouths (I've never seen one) but they do not have eyes.  Their skin is light sensitive and sensitive to the touch (that's why they squirm when you handle them).  Their body has no bones and is made up of two tubes; one inside the other.  

To eat, the worm grabs a hunk of soil with its throat, pulls it into the inner tube for digestion of digestible parts and then excretes the rest.  Get this:  in a single acre of garden, the worms will pass about 18 tons of soil through their bodies in a year.  (Yes, read that again.) (a ton is 2,000 pounds)  They eat more than me, barely.

Okay!  You now know enough about worms.  Be nice to them.  They can't live long in the sunlight so don't dig 'em up unless you want to eat them.  I hear they are pretty tasty.