An old anecdote about Canadian earthworms from a Dave Barry column. It
turned up this morning as well as the Vietnam Namalycastis item. I think it is
worth a re-run. :-)
(C) 1993 THE MIAMI HERALD
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
Subject: The road spill from Hell
"I am sick and tired of waiting for our so-called "leaders" to stop nattering
about the federal budget deficit, and instead roll up their sleeves and DO
something about the worsening Canadian-earthworm crisis.
In case you are not aware of this crisis (which was brought to my attention
by alert readers Nadine Lindst and Carla Hagstrom), let me bring you up to
speed:
In early May, the Canadian Press Service sent out a report that began:
"GEORGETOWN, Ontario -- More than 50 worm pickers beat each other
with steel pipes and pieces of wood in a battle over territory." The story
states that two rival worm-picking groups "arrived at the same spot at the
same time" and started fighting over who would pick worms there. A number
of people were hospitalized, four cars were wrecked, and a van was set on
fire.
At this point, you have the same questions I did, namely:
1. These people were fighting over WORMS?
2. Is there some kind of new drug going around Canada?
In an effort to answer these questions, I called Canada, which has
telephones, and spoke with detective Sgt. Michael Kingston of the Halton
Regional Police. He told me that worm- picking is a big deal in Ontario, which
produces a long, fat style of worm that is prized by fisherpersons as well as
the fish.
"There's a huge market," Kingston said. "On a good evening, an industrious
worker can make about $185 picking these worms." He said there's intense
competition for prime picking locations such as golf courses, where the
worms come to the surface at night to breed and smoke cigarettes.
No, I'm kidding about the smoking. Worms aren't that stupid. They surface to
breed and soak up dew. Kingston said the worm pickers, many of whom are
Vietnamese immigrants, wear miners' hats with headlamps and drop the
worms into cans strapped around their ankles. Doesn't that sound romantic,
in a Wild West kind of way? I like to think that, at the end of the night, the
pickers, ankle cans clanking, stride into the Worm Pickers Saloon, where
they pay for their whiskey by slapping hefty nightcrawlers down on the bar.
But this is not what happens. What happens is that the pickers load vast
quantities of worms into their vehicles and proceed to drive on Canadian
highways. This has led to a scary new development: worm spills. I am not
making this up. Here's a quotation from a May 25 story written by Timothy
Appleby for the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"TORONTO -- A van carrying a group of Vietnamese worm pickers
overturned west of Toronto yesterday morning, leaving eight people injured ...
. The accident occurred a few hundred metres from where another van full
of Vietnamese worm pickers crashed and rolled 10 days ago, sending 18
people to the hospital."
The story quotes a constable as saying, "I've never seen so many worms in
my life."
As any traffic-safety professional will tell you if he has been drinking, worms
on the highway are a recipe for disaster. Suppose a crowded tour bus is
tooling along a Canadian highway at a metric speed of 130 hectares per
centigram, the unsuspecting passengers chatting away happily in Canadian
("Eh?" "Eh?" "Eh?") when suddenly their laughter turns to screams
("EHHHHH!!!") as the bus encounters a giant worm slick and spins, out of
control, off the road, and the passengers are hurled out of doors and
windows, landing in the Canadian woods, injured and moaning ("ehhhhh"),
unable to protect themselves from wild mooses pooping on them or sadistic
beavers repeatedly tail- slapping their faces.
Your natural reaction, as a humanitarian, is: "So?" But perhaps you will not
be so blase when I inform you that, according to a Canadian bait expert
quoted in the Globe and Mail (I am still not making this up), most of the
Canadian worm crop is shipped, in tractor-trailers, TO THE UNITED
STATES. Yes. This means you could find yourself in a car directly behind a
large truck containing, by conservative estimate, 137.4 bazillion Canadian
earthworms (even more, if they've been having unprotected sex in there).
And if, God forbid, something went wrong and the truck's entire cargo
suddenly got dumped onto the road, you could find yourself plowing, at
upward of 60 miles per hour, into a writhing, slime- intensive worm mass
nearly TWICE the size of Rush Limbaugh.
What can we do to prevent this? The obvious solution, of course, is to set up
a Worm Blockade on the border, enforced by U.S. Customs agents, who
would inspect incoming trucks with the aid of fiercely loyal, specially trained
worm-sniffing trout. ("Rex found some! Good BOY, Rex!") But this would
only drive the worm traffic underground (rim shot).
A better long-term solution would be a massive federal "Buy American"
program aimed at U.S. worm consumers, including a requirement that all
domestic worms be clearly labeled "DOMESTIC WORM." This would also
create jobs in the chronically depressed U.S. worm-branding industry.
Oh, there would be Canadian objections ("Eh!"). But that is precisely why we
have nuclear weapons. If you agree with me on this issue, I urge you to send
a strongly worded letter to: Failed President Clinton, c/o Air Force One,
Runway 17.
Another thing you should do, if you agree with me on this issue, is seek
professional help."
------- End of forwarded message -------
-- ANNELIDA LIST
Discuss = <annelida at net.bio.net> = talk to all members
Server = <biosci-server at net.bio.net> = un/subscribes
Archives = http://www.bio.net/hypermail/annelida/
Resources = http://www.annelida.net/
--
