Hey, it's raining cats and dogs - the worms and the slugs need saving!!

Buckets of rain came tumblin' down.........

No eating out on the deck this evening.......

Well, all plans for a late morning walk and picnic in Gateway Mesa are shoved to one side - it is, and has been for hours, raining cats and dogs.

So, instead, I'll wait for the rain to ease a bit, then go out and save some of the worms before they drown.........they're forced out of their tunnels and then slither across the drive and end up in a puddle.
And they can't swim....:)

As any of my readers would expect, there's a story attached to that!! :)

Here's the story, then some photos and stuff about earthworms:

1948

Saving the worms

One Saturday, Mum and Dad planned to do some shopping in Market Jew Street in Penzance. As Jimmie was off early snaring rabbits with his friend, Ego James, in Bejowan Woods, I was left in charge of my little brother, 2 year old Charles. Charles was a handful, could never sit still, and was always poking around to see what he could find. As baby of the family, Charles, of course, could do no wrong and always got me into trouble.

When it was time for them to go, Mum gave us both a kiss, a piece of Cadbury’s chocolate to share, and headed off to the bus stop with Dad. We waved goodbye at the front gate and, as they turned the corner, we went to play in the back garden. The first thing we did was pick some goosegogs from the three gooseberry bushes, sat on the grass and crunched them as fast as we could. They were sour but good. Really brill.

Suddenly, I felt a spot of rain. A huge black cloud covered the sun and, as I looked up to the sky, it began to pour cats and dogs. I took Charles’s hand, and we ran inside, closed the door and climbed on two kitchen chairs to watch the water running down the kitchen window. We shared our chocolate. The rain pelted down and we moaned that Mum and Dad would be back before the sun came out and we had our fill of goosegogs.

After a few minutes, though, the black cloud moved slowly across the sky and the bright yellow sun reappeared. The rain stopped. We went back out in the garden again, jumping over the puddles on the path. Charles bent over and picked up a worm that was swishing around in one of the puddles, then started finding more and more of them. He held one in his hand and looked sadly at me.

“Poor things.” I said, “They’re drowning. We mustn’t let them drown, Charles. Let’s save ‘em, let’s save ‘em all.” 

Charles’s eyes brightened. I went inside and got my Old Holborne tobacco tin, ripped up a sheet of yesterday’s newspaper and spread it inside the tin as a lining.  

We searched over the puddles and collected every worm we found, put them on the newspaper to dry and then took them to a safer place in the garden.

When Mum and Dad came home from shopping, we told them what we had done. “That's great," said Dad, "they're ‘portant, you know, They keep my garden proper healthy. When the garden is healthy, that’s when my plants grow.” 

I have saved many hundreds of worms since that day.

I gather them up and put them in one of the three WORM HOTELS at the side of the house......

        Why Are Earthworms Important? Here's a much edited version of what I read on the EARTHWORMS of GREAT BRITAIN website: 

Earthworms have been called ‘ecosystem engineers’. Much like human engineers, earthworms change the structure of their environments. Their burrows create pores through which oxygen and water can enter and carbon dioxide can leave the soil.

Earthworms play an important role in breaking down dead organic matter in a process known as decomposition. This is what the earthworms living in my compost bin are doing and earthworms living in soils also decompose organic matter. Decomposition releases nutrients locked up in dead plants and animals and makes them available for use by living plants. Earthworms do this by eating organic matter and breaking it down into smaller pieces allowing bacteria and fungi to feed on it and release the nutrients.

Charles Darwin referred to earthworms as ‘nature’s ploughs’ because they mix soil and organic matter which improves the fertility of the soil.

Earthworms have a positive effect on bacteria and fungi in soils. This is important as bacteria and fungi are key in releasing nutrients from organic matter and making them available to plants. They are also an important source of food in their own right for many other animals that live in soil.

Earthworm structure

An earthworm consists of a digestive tube housed within a thick cylindrical muscular tube that forms the body. The body is divided into segments. The first segment encloses the mouth, and has a fleshy, muscular lobe on the top. This lobe can be pulled in to seal the mouth, or extended forward to probe the immediate surroundings. All segments, except the first, have eight retractable bristles which help the earthworm to grip surfaces as it moves.

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs.

When two earthworms are ready to mate they adopt a head-to-tail position, cover themselves in a layer of mucus, and exchange sperm. The saddle produces a mucous tube which detaches and moves forward along the body, collecting on the way the earthworm’s own eggs and the sperm received from its partner.

Fertilization occurs in the mucous tube which is shed from the front end of the earthworm. This dries in the soil to become an egg capsule, from which one or more young earthworms will eventually hatch.

OK, well, today I saved 73 worms and 17 slugs from drowning in the puddles, and put them in the Paull Worm Hotels.....  

These are my tools for cutting the waste food into very small pieces.....

Just thinking what the new worms are saying to the older residents:

 "HEY, Wormy, so THIS is where you've been hanging out!! 
Quite a 4star Wormy Hotel, yes?"

"Food's dead good, too...."

Breeding conditions are spot on.....................when I looked today, 
there were baby worms EVERYWHERE!!