Worm Hunting

Sometimes, you just gotta go do something ridiculous. It might have a purpose, maybe not, but if one day you wake up, look outside, and decide you want to gather up a large quantity of worms, well, this is the blog post for you.

First of all, go barefoot. Why? Because everyone needs an excuse to go romping around in the mud, and worm hunting is one of those reasons.

Second of all, go after a rainfall. Why? Well, apparently worms come crawling out of the ground after a rain. I've never really seen it myself, but you might get lucky. And hey, you need after-rain mud to squish inbetween your toes, right?

Now, if you seriously want to go digging for these crawly critters (maybe for fish bait, maybe for animal food, maybe just for fun) digging around in the ground is a sure-fire solution. Just as long as you have some dirt you're sure to find some worms as well, assuming you dig around long enough. But the problem is, you don't get very many little creepy crawlies this way, and most of them aren't really big either. So, how can you improve your worm hunting skills? Well look for fallen branches and logs, silly!

In all seriousness, any object that has been plastered onto the ground (you can tell because the bottom bits will be sunk into the dirt a little) is what you're looking for. Warm up those muscles and push whatever you find aside, and sure enough you'll see tons of worms nestled underneath! Other critters, such as centipedes, slugs, and ants are also common, but whether or not you want to collect those too is purely optional.

Now this is when you have to be fast. The little worms aren't all that worried about what you just did, but the big fat ones (like nightcrawlers) get pretty scared pretty fast. Though you'd assume that the smaller worms would be the faster worms, this unfortunately is not the case. So if you're hunting for large prey rather then mere numbers, you have to be quick. Having a garden scoop is handy here; though worms quickly slide down into the dirt if you're careful you can dig them out before they crawl too far out of sight. Inevitably, you're going to lose some of them. But, how fun would this hunting experience be if you caught everything you were searching for?

And, well, that's all there is to it! Worm hunting might not be the msot exciting of sports, but lack of complexity is not directly proportional to lack of fun. However, an enjoyment of slimy things definitely helps.

Pictures are not related, but definitely hilarious. (Thanks to my dad for finding this in the first place.)