Lights, Some Bends, and Something Strange
The photos (feature photo plus the ones below) are from a ride a couple of days ago, right at the transition of the Challenge from Part 1 to Part 2. The feature photo shows the lights at the local ball field.
I happened upon the above sign at the same park, which sounded pretty strange to me. I actually thought it was a joke. After getting home I did some research though, and according to the University of Vermont website, this is an actual thing. It sounds like “jumping” is a bit of an exaggeration. It’s more like “thrashing around”. This was in an area of the park where they were dealing with other invasives, although mostly of the plant variety. And here I always just thought worms were worms.
8 response to "Lights, Some Bends, and Something Strange"
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3 active challenges, and you got all three! Impressive! Good Work!
Covid, Monkeypox, and now Crazy Jumping Snake Worms!!!
That, is Super Strange!
Just looked into them as well, and they certainly are for real.
I didn’t realize the northeast was worm free until they were introduced in horticultural materials in the 18th and 19th century.
These guys (snake worms) came in from east Asia apparently
Hope you left your cycling shoes in the garage!!
Yeah, I never knew that worms weren’t indigenous to Vermont. Apparently if we ever had any they were scraped away with all the topsoil during the last ice age. It’s kind of fun how running across a random sign like that ended up providing so much education.
Good for you Bob, to something for each of the challenges. That takes some concentration! When I am out I have to focus my thoughts about what it is I am looking for! Nicely done, and once again I learn something here on 365 — jumping snake worms!!
I wish I could claim that I went out for a ride intending to look for all three, but in fact I just got lucky!
Crazy jumping snake worms are weird alright, but even more unbelievable to me is that there are no native earthworms in Vermont. What the heck did the early Vermonters use for fish bait?
Yes, it was a surprise to me as well. The all-knowing Internet tells me that the Abenaki, the predominant indigenous people in our area, fished mostly with traps.
No worms in the soil, maybe in Antarctica I thought. We’ve been invaded with Portuguese Millipedes which get into everything but at least they don’t jump.
I actually did some more reading on this, just because it seemed so unbelievable. What I found is that earthworms in general are indigenous to North America, but the glaciers that descended during the last ice age wiped out the population that existed in the northern part of the US. The earthworm population we have now in the northern part of the country, and presumably Canada, we’re unintentionally imported from Europe and Asia. One more example I guess of humans putting their mark on the planet.