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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Britney Spears vs. the Earthworm
Several years ago, when confronted by someone declaring Madonna to be “important,” I annoying asked: Is she important like oxygen is important? Well, I now have a new question for 2007: Is Paris Hilton or Britney Spears important like earthworms are important? Charles Darwin, after making a careful study of earthworms, wrote this: “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures.”
Some stuff I found on the Web:
One important thing that earthworms do is to plow the soil by tunneling through it. Their tunnels provide the soil with passageways through which air and water can circulate, and that’s important because soil microorganisms and plant roots need air and water just like we do. Without some kind of plowing, soil becomes compacted, air and water can’t circulate in it, and plant roots can’t penetrate it. One study showed that each year on an acre of average cultivated land, 16,000 pounds of soil pass through earthworm guts and are deposited atop the soil.
(I don’t think even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can make such a claim, do you?)
Henry David Thoreau sez: “A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity, these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
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