Nate Gave Me Straight-Cut Paper

I received this bag of paper from Nate the 9th. It is the second batch of straight-cut paper I received from him and likely the last as he's moved on to become a Ph.D. One day, I might find myself working for Sir Master Nathan. It would be a pleasure.

Mites on My Kitchen Floor and Communist Leader Spooky

July 6th, two days after feeding the worms, I came home from work and found this mitey mess:

I swept it up and avoided looking toward the worm bin corner of my kitchen until Saturday, the 9th, spending my time with Spooky instead. Spooky insisted on doing his impressions of Communist-Leader-on-a-Throne-of-Pillows. While Spook doesn't know the difference between pillows and folded towels, he did insist they be freshly washed, dried and hot from the dryer -- not suprising as Hollywood is his ambition. Spook really gets into role-playing.

Kim Jong Il Spooky -- unfortunately images including Elvis glasses and platform shoes were out of focus, likely due to his supernatural aura that a human-made camera cannot capture. Dear Leader insisted I post this single image though it is not his best. Not only is He modest, turns out His real focus was on pounding a case of Hennessy and inventing the best cheeseburger I've ever tasted. Absolute success, of course!

Then came Saturday, the 9th.

After sweeping the floor, I pulled Adam out from under the table and was confident the mites were carrying on like mad in there. Those dark rings on the lid clearly came from the mites under the lid, which crunched as I opened it:

Something needs to be done about these red bastards.

Catch Bin Cleaning

Over the long holiday weekend, since I've never done it, not once for any bin, I thought the worms would like to celebrate the three-year anniversary with a good cleaning of the catch bins. And when I say good cleaning, I mean Dawn and a Scotch-brite sponge was utilized as well as copious amounts of water.

Adam, before and after:

Eve, before and after:

The Offspring, before and after:

Number 4, before and after:

Number 5, before and after:

Ah, the bins are in much better condition. My bathroom, though, needed some major attention afterwards -- it was a wreck in there since all of the scrubbing was done in the shower; the draining went into the toilet. Yeah, it was a big mess.

Worm Food, 070411

Normally I feed the worms once a week. The weekend of the 26th, I totally slacked and only fed Number 5, which, looking back on was a mistake as it was so humid in the bin. Between June 19th and July 4th, I only had this much food to give the crews. It's pretty paltry.

It turned out to be a good thing I had minimal food since many of the bins didn't need too much food.

I fed the worms:

• half a red onion
• old cherries: stems, pits and all
• ancient nasty pineapple pieces
• mushrooms
• carrot peels and tips
• onion skins
• old cherries, old cherry pits, and old cherry stems
• tiny cloves from a garlic bulb as well as the papers
• celery ends
• corn cobs (3)
• juiced limes
• some Honey Nut Cheerios

That left me with Nate's hair and a partial bag of Cheerios.

Poop Return: It's Stinky

This little batch of poop was returned to me because of a claim that it was stinky.

At first, I was all, "Stinky? No way, dude, you're hallucinating! Bring it back to me and I'll investigate this so-called stinky poop."

When I opened the lid, I almost gagged. It was fairly odorous. And the color was a little off too. It was weird.

Looking at the lid, I saw poop on it, a little bit of condensation and a couple mites. Living mites.

So I let that stinky poop air out a couple days. Every once in a while, I put the lid back on the container and gave it a good shake. And the poop went back to normal. No odor, no extra moisture, ready to rock and roll.

What I realize now is that giving poop away in an air-tight container is not the brightest thing to do, especially if the giftee isn't ready to use it right away. Little critters are in there, working their magic, burping and farting all the while.

Tuesday morning I snapped the lid on the Glad container and delivered it to Tony. Wednesday morning that little Glad container showed up empty on my desk.

Meanwhile, I sifted some poop from the latest drying batch (with a fine-mesh strainer I'd pilfered from my kitchen), made sure the poop was really dry by letting it sit in the sun a few days, and then bagged it for Cang.

This time I made sure to limit the quantity to what Cang had originally requested: a cup, which fit nicely in a sandwich baggy.

I hope the poop was dry enough that I don't regret the packaging.

Mite Bloom

This is what you can expect if the humidity in your worm bin is too much. Remember what I said about humidity making a mite-friendly environment?

When I was getting ready to feed the worms, I found this brown blob on the floor near the leg of the table under which I keep the worms.

Looking closely, I saw they were mites.

When removing the lid from the nearest worm bin, the lid crunched. Flipping the lid upside-down, I saw quite a few mites on it.

And there were mites all over the cardboard kept over the poop.

Fortunately, the rest of the bin looked normal.

As an FYI, some mites are expected in a worm bin. You'll see them in little clumps on paper or on food. This many though is sort of pushing it. Cut the bin down to a paper-only feeding regiment until the moisture is back to normal. The mite population will miraculously reduce accordingly.

Western Spooky

With his Scott brand toilet paper roll cover as a bandana, all he needs is a horse. And maybe some cattle to drive.