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.

How I Made Eve, aka, How to Split a Worm into Two

June 28, 2008 Adam was born. By August, I determined that an Eve was necessary. And so she was made.

Segue:

Holy crap, I've been keeping worms for nearly three years!

Later this month will be the 3rd anniversary;

I know it's not the paper anniversary

so would it be rock or scissors?

 

August 26th, 2008, Eve was born from Adam. I had made it so. Rodney helped. Not that Rodney and I...well, nevermind. Eve came from Adam. Period.

 

Look at the time frame between Adam and Eve. That's just two months. Certainly I could've postponed on making Eve, but at the time I was ultra-concerned that the worms would be suffering if I kept them in such a pile of poop. As I said in the About Me, I didn't know what to do with so much (what I'd now consider not-very-much) of Adam's poop anyway.

 

So let's take a look at what I did to split Adam into Adam and Eve. It'll be fun trip down memory lane for me and, for my current generation of worms, family history.

 

First, I soaked a couple of paper grocery bags in water and transferred them to the newly bottom-holed Eve. Then I soaked some shredded paper, primarily grocery bags, and transferred those to Eve.

Because I bought the coir and hadn't used it to make a bed for Adam, I went ahead and used it to make bedding for Eve; surplus went to Adam. This poorly imaged brick of RoLanka coir was what I started with.

After removing the coir from the plastic encasement and glossy paper label, the brick went into the water left from soaking the above-mentioned paper.

The coir went from totally dry at time zero to semi-soaked exterior in 6 minutes and (after flipping) totally-soaked exterior at 36 minutes.

The coir was totally soaked and started breaking up at about 38 minutes.

I put in a nice layer of the coir on the paper in Eve.

Followed by a nice even layer made up of some of this food.

The food included coffee grounds and filters, puffed rice cereal, lettuce, tomatoes, used paper towels, melon rinds and seeds, carrots and mushrooms.

Adam sidled up next to Eve and gave her half of his wormy contents.

Adam was fed the rest of the food and Eve was topped off with more damp grocery bag strips.

After the remaining coir was spread over Adam, additional dry paper was added to the coir water briefly before being spread over Adam's coir layer.

Cardboard from a thin box a book came in was placed over Adam and Ever before their lids were snapped on.

Voila, a happy couple.