Last summer I ordered some Africans (Eudrilus eugeniae) because I was curious about how they’d compare to the 3 kinds of worms I already had. One thing that was clear from the beginning was that these weren’t your “red wigglers” (eisenia fetida). These suckers were huge —about 3 times as long as an EF—and they did NOT take kindly to being bothered. Their reputation for stampeding is well deserved. I found some that traveled the entire length of my house—on carpet! I have no idea how they made it that far before drying out and turning to crispies. They are an impressive worm.
I did my usual when I got my worms: divided them into 2 bins. That’s my insurance in case of catastrophic loss of a bin, although I’d never had that problem before. That way I still have some worms left with which to build a new herd. For a variety of reasons, I ended up with two decimated herds after a couple months. I combined the two into one bin and left them alone. This time I fed them, but I tried to disturb them as little as possible; I didn’t want to cause what was left of my herd to stampede. So, for a couple months now they’ve been left alone except for food.
Today when I fed them I decided to see how they were doing. They are, in fact, GONE! Oh, there are worms in there, probably the worms I’d caught glimpses of when adding food. But they aren’t EEs. They are EFs. There’s nothing wrong with EFs, but I did want to have the EEs, too. The EEs can produce vermicompost like mad. I just can’t figure out how the darn EFs got into that bin to begin with! Like orphan socks in the laundry, I doubt I’ll ever know what happened.
