Every so often, life presents you with a couple of seemingly unrelated notions that sort of wriggle together.
Sometimes what you end up with is a clearer view of the world. Other times, you are involuntarily committed for a severe mental disorder. Which brings me to my wife.
My wife is complaining about sore shoulders. This is because we were just vaccinated in both arms — one shot for the winter flu, and one for the latest COVID update. Predictably, a few crazy uncles we know tut-tutted about us getting these vaccines every year.
Let me paint you the full picture: It was raining on the way to the clinic, and the sidewalks were full of earthworms. Predictably, a few crazy uncles we know also tut-tutted about the rain and the earthworms every year.
Perhaps you have tut-tutted about these things, too. Especially the worms, which are, technically speaking, animals just like dogs and cats and striking Canada Post employees. You have a lot to tut-tut about: in one acre of land (metric: 30 furlongs) there can be more than a million earthworms!
British Columbia has at least 24 species of earthworms — four native and 18 introduced from Europe, possibly after the war when times were tough. The other two species are currently in Arizona, where they spend the winter months, just like many anti-vaxxers.
I would tell you their scientific names to prove I know how to use the Google machine, but honestly, they all sound a little nauseating. Very wiggly and icky (let’s agree on a new adjective here: wigglicky). Look elsewhere for a good K-pop band name.
Currently, there are about 7,000 described species of earthworms, but it’s expected that another 20,000 have yet to be discovered. I don’t exactly know who expects this, maybe scientists, maybe people who make horror movies?
Anyway, earthworms are fascinating creatures. They move by contracting the circular and longitudinal muscles that run through their bodies, in much the same way you and I move food from the dinner table to the McLoughlin Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in Esquimalt.
Worms do not have eyes but they can sense light, especially at the front end, which is mostly mouth. They move away from light and will become paralyzed if exposed to light for too long, like P. Diddy in a hotel corridor.
Worms help make soil healthy by tunnelling in and bringing subsoil closer to the surface and mixing it with their slime, a secretion that contains nitrogen, an important nutrient for plants.
If any of this oligochaete (Latin for “I am disgusted but cannot look away”) biology grosses you out, DO NOT READ the following:
• earthworms eat their own weight every day
• the average life span of a worm is 4-5 years
• the myth of both parts of a worm surviving when it has been cut in two is a damnable lie
• worms are hermaphrodites and have both male and female organs, so are very popular with the woke crowd
Earthworms were wiped out in most of what is now Canada during the last ice age, but survived in areas that were not glaciated, such as the west coast of British Columbia, and the brains of prominent members of the Kennedy dynasty, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Mr. Kennedy — I swear I am not making this up — really did have a brain worm. He is Donald Trump’s first choice for US health secretary. This makes total sense because RFK Jr. has a long history of spreading misinformation on vaccines and medical science in general.
FAIRLY IMPORTANT REMINDER: vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Vaccination opposition isn’t a new idea. As long as there have been vaccines, there have been people who objected to them. For example, me at age five, when the big nurse with hairy arms uncapped the hypodermic syringe and wrestled me into a corner.
But back to earthworms … Obviously, I am not saying that anti-vaxxers are worms. I am implying it. But the real point I want to make is that vaccines are more related to earthworms than anti-vaxxers.
Both work behind the scenes, unnoticed and underappreciated until something goes wrong. An unhealthy garden needs worms just like an unhealthy society needs vaccines.
Vaccines and earthworms quietly work to help the natural world, but neither gets the appreciation they deserve. No one ever thanks an earthworm for a rich tomato harvest, or a vaccine for a functioning immune system.
Anti-vaxxers fear vaccines for many reasons, such as not trying hard enough in high school. Also, because vaccines contain many ingredients they can’t pronounce. I suppose earthworms likewise fear birds for reasons they are not able to clearly articulate. Both live in fear of something bad swooping down unexpectedly.
With that in mind, I think it’s important to close on a positive note, which is to suggest that we consider earthworms as the vaccines of our soil — nature’s little injectors, digging holes in the lawn, enriching the earth so plants can thrive.
No… wait… Hang on a second while the crazy uncles and I figure out what’s REALLY going on here … Is this another conspiracy by Big Compost?
Are the earthworms secretly funded by Bill Gates to tunnel 5G networks underground? No worm mandates in my backyard! Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
