Leave my worms alone!

We've been getting some heavy-drizzly type rain for the last few days and it's been wonderful!

The problem is, the moisture is finally soaking down to my poor thirsty worms that have been living about 113 feet underground, trying their best to avoid being dried and fried by the heat we had been having. ( Oh my...I just love saying "had" It's such a nice word. The heat we HAD!!)

So, when I woke up this morning, I went on a "worm rescue".

You know...I don't think I'll ever fully understand why worms come *UP* to get out of the water, when all they have to do is go back down, because it's dry as a bone just a few inches down, so there has to be a happy medium there somewhere, right?

WHY do they commit hari kari by crawling onto the cement where you would think they would know they were going to get shrivelled up into chow mien noodles? Am I right ...or what?

I mean, I know they're just worms and have itsy bitsy little wormy brains, but you would think that they would do a little evolving or learning somewhere along the line, wouldn't you??

Sometime in the last million or so years, you would have thought that the light-bulb would have gone off for at least one of them, don't you think?

Anyway... when I find the little wrigglers crawling piteously across the cement, on a one-way trip to fried noodle time, I pick 'em up and put them back in the garden. Where they can do whatever it is that worms do and enrich my soil or whatever. I feel so virtuous afterwards. Like I've contributed something during my lifetime, you know? It does my heart good.

So what happens after I put those worms back in their rightful place? Back with their little wormy families?

The bloody starlings discover a veritable "worm smorgasbord" in the grass, dirt or whatever I've put the worms... and they eat like there's no tomorrow...that's what happens.

They put it out on the birdie grapevine and before you know it, I have dozens and dozens and dozens of starlings all making happy starling noises as they do the spaghetti slurping thing.

Those skinny little starling's eat ...and eat... and eat... Until they're looking like bloated pheasants or Thanksgiving turkeys in the making, or something.

I chase the birds off time and time again, yet they keep coming back by the hundreds and feasting on their little birdy version of spaghetti noodles.

But you know what? A bird will NOT look at a worm crawling across the cement. They will not eat a worm that is attempting "suicide by shriveling". They just won't.

But if I pick that worm up and try and save his life, suddenly it's "noodle buffet" time for our feathered friends.

I have never seen any other birds - other than the starlings - seriously eating worms.

Oh, the magpies eat them, but I have never seen a Magpie party-time going on on my lawn... ermmm, dirt.

And what used to happen before the starlings were introduced into this country? They were "introduced" into Melbourne in 1857 and then into other ares of Australia... But in 1895, the import of starlings were banned. Because they ruin everything.

So my question is ..."Who or what, ate the earthworms before 1857?"

Was the country a giant earthworm farm? Or rather, a giant farm with heaps of earthworms? Is that why the worms in certain parts of Victoria are so huge - which puts new meaning to the "giant earthworm farm" concept?

Did they evolve into snake-sized worms, just to outsmart the bloody starlings??

>>>See here for giant earthworms<<<

Probably not, but still... it's interesting as all get out.

If you like worms, that is.

I think I need a holiday.

Or a life.