Lessons From the Great Worm Massacre
We haven’t learned much since Silent Spring
Every year around this time, I will be out walking my dog, enjoying the magic of spring, and then I’ll come across the scene of a slaughter. This is what the crime scene looks like:
For a stretch of sidewalk that happens to be exactly the length of one person’s yard, I will walk past the corpses of hundreds of earthworms, curled up and dried out on the sidewalk. These creatures don’t seem like they’ve died a pleasant death. They’ve fled their natural habitat and slithered out onto the sidewalk to roast and desiccate in the sun.
I’ve come to think of this annual event as the Great Worm Massacre.
The Great Worm Massacre, as far as I can tell, is the result of homeowners dumping fertilizer on their lawns in the spring. Indeed, it’s the greenest, most weed-free lawns that seem to feature the gnarliest carnage on their sidewalks. It turns out that commonly used lawn fertilizers contain acids that kill worms. Although some people argue that, if you apply fertilizer correctly, you won’t kill as many worms, it seems like that message isn’t getting through. The worms die en…
