Before we get into worms I’ll briefly set the scene: I just moved to New Orleans. I wanted to process this life transition in a meaningful way (do mushrooms and fuse with my tomato plant), but I got covid instead, so I mostly looked at my phone and our cat. She has her first suitor, a large orange boy who stared at her through the window under the light of a full moon as she screamed in horror.
I began as well to think about nematodes. This is not a new line of thought for me but certainly resurgent. What do nematodes have to do with anything, you ask? How naïve. Nematodes have to do with everything. They are tiny worms that live everywhere. They can be found in places such as:
Garden soil (that’s sort of the tie-in here)
Sweat bee guts
Millipede guts
Human guts
Many organs in general
Siberian permafrost
Beech tree leaves and buds (not great)
Manatee skin (ok I wrote about this once)
Moss
Outer space (not necessarily because they want to, but it seems like they can)
Peat bogs
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Football fields
Ant bottoms (which they transform into a big red berry)
Nematodes do good and terrible things. They have six (?) lips and sometimes teeth. Their mouths look like this or this. Plenty to consider.
(Image via USDA/Flickr)
But can you ride a nematode like in dune?
Much to think about. Enlightening