A Worm's Eye View
There comes a stage in a relationship when a woman recognises she’s been supplanted in her man’s affections – and it’s happened to me. Over worms.My boyfriend has bought a wormery, yes, a wormery, and he’s enraptured by his 1,000 tiger worms. Tiger worms, I ask you. One stripe around the belly doesn’t turn them into jungle predators.They’re burrowed into earth in their purpose-built home, scoffing his household waste and any of mine he can wheedle.
The boyfriend is totally smitten with his Can-O-Worms - which the Aussie manufacturers grandly describe as a worm farm (it’s a plastic bin). He’s been describing, eyes dancing with excitement, how the worms will reproduce inside their love nest until there’s 20,000 of them within two to five years. Yippee.
They live in his back yard and he calls them the lads, although technically they’re hermaphrodites, visiting them every evening after work. Cooing at them. He’d check on them in the morning too but the little darlings cringe from direct light.
You daren’t throw away a teabag, a loo roll centre, even your nail clippings, for the love of God, for fear of depriving the worms of sustenance. Although they’re so ill-bred, if there’s no food they simply eat their coir mat bedding. These fellows are insatiable, they gobble half their body weight daily, so the more you feed them the more voracious they become. They devour pizza cartons, coffee grounds, egg shells and the contents of the vacuum cleaner. Despite such sturdy digestive systems, however, they have their limits. One week he gave them an excess of orange rind and had to add lime mix to alleviate vermiform tummy trouble.
They even have a special covering called a duvet. Honestly. He always chops their food into manageable pieces, and it’s only a matter of time before we go shopping for their own food processor.
I caught him just about to use his spaghetti tongs to stir the worms’ mulch. ‘I would have washed them afterwards,’ he protested. I confiscated them, but you’d want to have eyes in the back of your head.
Of course they are eco-sound and we all do produce an excess of household waste. But you’d imagine they were winsome pets, the way he carries on. I’m waiting for a veto on going out at night in case the worms are lonely.
It was touch and go whether I’d receive my own special delivery of worms as a Valentine’s gift last week. I can only presume he’s delaying until they reproduce, so he can present me with their first litter as a token of regard.
‘I hope you’re not going to make fun of my worms,’ he muttered suspiciously, at the mention of a column. ‘No, of you,’ I replied. He heaved a sigh of relief.
He says I’ll be grateful when he brings me top grade worm goo for my garden – some women get flowers from men - because apparently it’s high-octane fertiliser. Organic, too. I can look forward to lush banana trees where once scrappy shrubs huddled.
Which does sound desirable, I must admit. And those worms owe me.
