Penelope The Worm

After buying a bug catching kit from the gift shop of the Butterfly Pavilion, Dakota and I drove home in the rain and talked of the worms that would be coming out in our back yard.

At home we jumped from our car and immediately set off on the hunt for a worm. After 12 failed attempts - those worms can book through dirt! - we caught a huge 8 inch worm and put it (Dakota named her Penelope) in a container far too small for the worm and the added dirt.

Five minutes later Dakota suggested we release Penelope back into the wild. Unable to get our fingers through the opening of the "cage", we tried to gently shake her out but she would not budge.

We tried placing the container on the ground in a patch of wet dirt near the spot where we had caught her and began calling to her to come on out. I finally managed to pry Penelope's head out with a twig she had curled around. While I held the cage upside down so that the worm dangled out, Dakota grabbed on and tugged her out the rest of the way then laid her down on the mud. It was rainy and cold.

Penelope never made it back underground. We tried covering her up with a clod of dirt, but found her dead the next morning. We learned that worms don't like being pulled out of their holes.

My daughter's next project was to build a slug house. Watch the video - click on the link at the top of this post.