i now have 1001 new pets, and there names are: walter, evelyn, rex, tyrone, yvette, unger, irene, ophelia, patrick, abner, slick, danver, franklin, george, hank, jackson, kyle, leon, zach, xavier, charlotte, vick, bob, ned, and micky. i would've started with 'Q' but skipped it out of my dislike for the name quentin. go ahead, try to think of a name for every letter in the alphabet, see if you like starting with 'quentin'.
actually, only one of my new pets has a name, and it's pepino, a garden snail i found in the cucumber box at work. he/she (all snails are hermaphrodites) had a smashed shell, presumably from the journey from california to colorado, so i decided to take it home to shley's gastropod sanctuary for some calcium rich resting. snails can repair their shells if necessary, so i'm going to see if it happens. so far pepino is just curled up in a weird little throbbing snail ball with ruffled edges, but part of the shell is on the other side of the strawberry box that he lives in, so presumably something is happening.
snails, slugs, caterpillers, ladybugs, and other little creatures are regularly found in the produce at grocery stores- so get over the 'ew' factor. they live in the fields and sometimes get picked up with the cucumber or argula- sometimes they're even packaged in the earthbound farms salads. most of the time we take whatever we find outside, but occassionally the species is way too cool to abandon- ferdinand, for example. he was a tarantula found in the banana box (before my time) and was taken to the butterfly pavillion. and, of course, pepino. pepinito!
the other 1000 new pets are red wiggler worms that live in my pantry. now, before you get all antsy pants about me having worms in my pantry, let me assure you that they are self-contained, odorless, and perfectly safe for kitty consumption. marley knows because she's had a few and happily hacked them up with little fuss. i guess nobody hacks happily... the point is, she learned to not eat the worms and didn't suffer. too much.
anyway.
the worms escaped, see.... but they won't escape again. it was a fluke! i set aside about 500 worms to give to a friend, leaving them in the little travel bag with dirt that came through the mail. yes, i mail-ordered worms. i thought, hey, they came from arkansas in this bag, what's one more evening? i awoke the next morning to the sweet sounds of my cat puking in the next room, then found a bunch of two-inch lines radiating out from under the sink where i'd placed the bag.* escapees! i guess they were looking for food. i 'captured' the ones that hadn't dried up or been eaten by the puking cat and put them with their friends in the worm box. the box stays in the pantry, but, despite previous breakouts and friends sending me videos of mutant worms attacking humans on far-off desert planets, i have no fear of them wriggling out of their new home. i give them lots of yummy, partially decomposed food i find in my fridge and the whole little wormosphere is a pretty happy place. they wriggle, eat, wriggle, poop, and wriggle some more. one day i'll have a box full of worm castings to use as fertilizer on my plants- and just so you know, this stuff sells for a dollar a bag- and i mean TINY bag. meanwhile, i'm not throwing away any food in my trash can, so...yay. recycling!
i would love to take pictures of my new friends but my camera sucks donkey balls. (pardon the language- but how many E18 errors can i have without wanting to throw the damn thing in the loo?) so for now you'll have to imagine
*the compost bucket under the sink has been abandoned. not a big enough space for composting. no heat=stink.
7 comments:
What kind of worms are they? Do some have names, some no name? Or are they named in batches of evelyns and danvers? Somebody told me last night that, according to the New Yorker (or was it the NY Times?) there were no worms in America before the colonists arrived. None. All your worms are, like most of us, spawn of immigrants.
I am very pleased to hear of your microcosm. I hope Kate B has been fully updateS, as she has expressed interest to me more than once about worm boxes!
i did know that there were no worms here previous to colonial occupation- there still aren't any worms in hawaii. no worms!
sadly, none of them have names. i was just trying to be funny. they're red wriggler worms- nightcrawlers aren't so bardzo dobrze for composting because they borrow too deep (i think?)- red wrigglers are surface dwellers and therefore better at living in little worm boxes. at least that's what sounds like a plausible explanation.... i can't remember right now.
‘the worms escaped…it was a fluke…’
he he he bwa hahaha haha
Comedy gold.
Speaking of which, where on earth is that peeler?
Well I have to invent the
Gall darn thing….oh, you are
Speaking of the infamous potato
Peeler that is bandied about
By the Fillmer sisters in a kind
Of gift giving dual.
Well, last I heard you were going
To be visited by a stripper in a
Potato suit…we’ll call him the hot
Potato. The potato suit is going to
Be made up of Velcro potato peels
And the hot potato is going to sing
In a sultry voice: “one potato,
Two potato,
Three potato,
Four. Five potato, six potato,
Seven potato,
MORE!”.
And each time he says ‘more’ he is
Going to peel off one of his Velcro potato
Peels.
When he gets to the last potato peel, and
By the way, that last peel is not attached by
Velcro (ouch), the peeler will be revealed.
oh. my. god.
Dear Master Composter....
I've been dumping my scraps in a heap out by the garden, not in a bucket under the sink. Do I still need worms, or will the local worms do the trick?
Thanks for your advice
Happily Rotting in Kentucky
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