Earthworms

Sanitation comes first to mind at the thought of eating a live earthworm. I certainly soaked my first few over a half hour before I decided that the purging of those little digestive tracts was proceeding just too slowly. Yes, there were a few little black specs still visible in those little G.I. tracts. Did I die? No. I may have felt a little sick but that was more an emotional response. The emotional thing will take some work if you have not conquered it already. If you are curious the flavor of earthworms is largely affected by what they have been eating. Mine tasted a lot like onions, but not until I tried hemp oil did I recognize that special flavor. Hemp oil is high in essential fatty acids (EFAs), just like earthworms. It is that cod-liver-oil like essential nutrition that will help keep your brain sharp and make your cellulite disappear if you have any. Lots of EFAs, as my wife and I both experienced, will eliminate your need for sunscreen, although post pole shift gloom may make that benefit moot. Given all those benefits, were I to choose between feeding my worms to chickens or fish, or eating them myself, I would have to think. Do some math maybe.

At the 2000 Vermillenium earthworm conference in Kalamazoo Michigan, I was astounded to see a chart presented by someone reporting on the U.S. EPA trials of using earthworms to process solid waste in three medium sized towns. They were processing about 2 tons of solid waste a day as I recall, and the chart was showing a logarithmic scale of the population of the three organisms they measure when evaluating the safety of a disbursable substance: Amoebae, Helminth Ovae (tapeworm eggs), and enteric viruses. The chart showed a fairly straight line that got lower and lower with each day until it crossed the safety level at about the seventieth day. The line kept decreasing at the same rate after that. The implication I came away with is that those invisible sand filled gizzards are really capable of grinding up even viruses, which boggles my mind, and that the nickname "lions of the soil" is well deserved in the case of earthworms. They sure don’t look like predators, but I do imagine I hear little lips smacking each time I open one of my worm bins. Of course the worms themselves have plenty of bacteria in their little rear ends, but apparently none harmful to us. Nice to know. So if you do find yourself in astonishing circumstances you may be glad you can easily recognize the entire annelid family.

Offered by Steve.