Higo Blog

Hahaha, it will be interesting to see if anyone is disapppointed by this post due to the misleading title. I think that these blue worms are a likely source of inspiration for those, uh... creative cartoon monsters, but on to the monster annelids.

It is inevitable that on a nature hike with kids at English camp, the boys come across one of these shockingly blue iradescent nightcrawlers (mimizu in Japanese). They are then obliged to chase girls around with it, to use it as a whip on eachother (hee-yah! whoopshhhh! Oh wait, no, thats what an American kid would say...), and finally to throw it in the face of one of the counselors. No it wasn't me. If it were my face, I would have made the little bastards eat it while teaching the others to sing "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I'll eat some worms".

These things are just nasty looking and big (about 3/4 of a foot- yes! I thought I forgot all about the standard measurement system after moving to Japan...). They move in an oozing manner, stretching out, and then scrunching their bodies forward among the humus and leaf litter. I have a feeling that they have few natural predators because they taste nasty or are poisonous. A hunk of easy to catch, brightly colored protein doesn't tend to last long in the forest.