Dr. Jesse, B.A.

Author: Jesse Davidson

If you want to call yourself an athlete, but don't want to deal with physical contact, sweating, or heavy breathing, I think I have found your sport. You need only three accessories - a big stick, a piece of metal, and fondness for all things slippery. In a competitive sport known as "worm grunting," found in Florida and other southern states, an "athlete" sees how many earthworms he or she can pluck from the ground in a limited amount of time, the record firmly standing today at 511 worms in 30 minutes. There is no digging involved, though. The competitor stabs the stick into the ground, shears the top with a metal file or saw (creating a grunting sound), and waits eagerly as earthworms struggle to the surface of the soil for immediate capture.

While this technique has been used for many years by fisherman to score some free bait, not until last month has science swooped in and found that this shearing of metal-on-stick produces the same sound frequencies as a burrowing mole - an earthworm epicure. A worm gets fooled into coming to the soil surface to escape death, but ends up in a tally as a sports statistic. Humans have a lot more to attribute to earthworms besides entertaining country bumpkins, though. In 1881, Charles Darwin warmly described them as such: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures." If they weren't already red, I'm sure they'd be blushing.

In giving credit where it is due, worms are our most respected underground act (sorry, haus) because they do the same thing as farmers before planting crops: they till and aerate the soil. More importantly, though, several types of worms have been receiving waves of media coverage in the past decade because they have the ability to turn all kinds of toxic waste into nutrient-rich compost, usable as detoxified fertilizer. The best part about worm labor is that they don't care about their working conditions, as long as there is garbage or something funky to munch on - one species' idea of a corner office is a pile of manure. Landfill waste management today makes use of these worms to break down organic materials before bacteria can do so, preventing the release of noxious gases like methane and nitrous oxides (which are much more potent effectors of climate change than carbon dioxide).

Although I sing their praises in this column as some of our most significant sustainability leaders, I have to make a personal apology to earthworms. I have no regard for them. When I see them splayed out on the sidewalk after a heavy rain, I have to bite my lip and trudge on to BiHall, trying not to cringe when I feel their soft ketchup-packet bodies under my feet. Horrible, I know. With a thesis looming, my "move it or lose it" attitude does not give me time to tiptoe up College Street. The next time you find yourself in a similar situation though, try your best not to look down; you may begin to feel differently about your carbon footprint.