I read that the last "Ice Age" left the North American continent earthwormless. (Don't ask how they figured that out.) The point of the thing is that until fairly recent times, birds had to make due with bugs. Robins became so skinny that their eggs were flat and fell through the cracks in their nests or were blown away like paper scraps by the least breeze! Hearing of this horrid bird delema, some kindly European folks carefully put worms into pots along with a plant or two and set off for the new world intent on rectifying the situation.

Upon arrival the plants and worms were stuffed into the ground and those 'fleet of seta' worms took off in all directions. Their descendants, mostly of the 'Family' Lumbricidae and/or of European descent, and less recently, the 'family' Megascolecidae 'genus' Pheretima which arrived, I suppose, in much the same way from some Asian land, go happily about their business (or go fishing), until this very day.

The robin problem was obviously resolved and, infact, I have it on good authority that, until the worms arrived, all robins were a drab grey color only gaining the ruddy complexion on their chests after many generations of fattening up on Red worms.

Now, just in case you bought all of that, you might want to run it by your teacher or a close friend, or even go to the library to check the facts. Ya just never know!

More? Did you know that there is a flatworm, native to New Zealand, that has been introduced into parts of Europe and England? Although it seems to get along well enough with other worms back in New Zealand, once moved to the new locations it began voraciously consuming all the native varieties of worms. A worm that eats worms!

Worms can get seriously weird. One of my brothers recently returned from a trip to the 'Land Down Under' with a photo of an earthworm which was being held by a group of handlers like you would expect an anaconda to be held. He swears the darn thing is for real and over 20 feet long. It looked like it would make "world class" fish bait to me.