Made you look! I wanted my first topic post to be something worthy of the Straight Dope - a bit weird, humorous, and interesting. OK, here goes, the topic is: Worm Charming, aka Worm Fiddling. First, get your minds out of the gutter! I’m talking earthworms here.
Thumbing through my old 1994 copy of the Guinness Book of Records, I noticed a record of 511 worms charmed out of the ground (a 9.84 sq. ft. plot) in 30 minutes. This record is held by Tom Shufflebotham and accomplished at the first World Worm Charming Championship in Willaston, Great Britain in 1980. “Garden forks or other implements are vibrated in the soil by competitors to coax up the worms, but water is banned.”
Question 1: Why would vibrations cause worms to come to the surface?
Question 2: What are the detailed instructions for doing this? I’m enjoying the thought of the Teeming Millions perking up their backyard cookouts demonstrating this for their friends.
There seems to be very little information about this on the net, other than a few sites that list these competitions as tourist attractions. The Straight Dope seems to be the only place to obtain this information. I’m hopeful that someone can shed some light on this vital topic! Thanks.