Tootie's Backyard

Earl’s Home

Earl lives in the ground, in moist soil and under leaf litter around Grandma’s garden.

Because he doesn’t have lungs, and Earl breathes through his skin. He comes to the surface after it rains to visit, but he can’t live on the surface when it’s dry because he needs the moisture to breathe. He also needs moisture to keep from drying out and to create the mucus that helps him slide through the dirt.

Earl is a master digger, easily tunneling through the soil using setae, small bristles that cover the ringlike segments, annuli, that make up his body.

When Earl hatched from an egg that had been encased in a cocoon last spring, he was a small-threadlike worm.

This fall, Earl became an adult. He is now a full-grown earthworm with the signature pink color.

What other animals do you know of that dig tunnels?

Earl’s Hobbies

He spends most of his time under the surface, tunneling through the soil, only coming to the surface after a rain or when fleeing a predator, like a mole.

Earl is deaf and blind but is sensitive to light and vibrations, and he can sense when someone is nearby. Earl is shy and generally dives back underground when Tootie, Yoshi, or their friends come near.

When Earl is on the surface, he likes to hang out under dead leaves that hold moisture from the ground.

You’re most likely to see Earl during spring, early summer, and autumn.

Earl can’t survive temperatures below freezing or above 95 degrees. When summer gets really hot, he stays underground, curled in a ball coiled into a slime-coated ball, and goes into a sleep-like state called estivation, which is similar to hibernation.

In the winter, Earl burrows deep into the soil to hibernate until the soil above him unfreezes.

What other animals live under the ground?

Earl’s Diet

Earl is an omnivore, meaning that he eats both plant matter and meat.

To create the tunnels that he lives in and travels through, Earl eats the dirt in front of him, consuming large amounts of dirt in a single day.

Through the dirt, Earl gets nutrients from decaying roots and leaves, as well as living matter.

Earl eats between a third of his body weight and his full body weight each day in dirt.

Through the soil, Earl eats nematodes, or roundworms, protozoans, which are single-celled organisms like amoebas, tiny multicellular animals called rotifers, bacteria, and fungi.

Earl also eats manure and decomposing animals. As a result of his diet, Earl often carries salmonella and e.coli, neither of which makes him sick, but can make you sick if you handle him.

What other animals eat protozoa?