Pedigree: In Perspective

Historians tell us that among the useful items the first European colonists brought with them to the New World was one that we might not have suspected: the earthworm. Earthworms didn't occur originally in much of the north, it seems; rather European species were carried here in the colonists' ships, hidden in the soil those vessels loaded as ballast and in the root balls of plants they carried.

Properly reflected on, the idea that a creature as familiar and ubiquitous as the garden worm should be an exotic can do us good. It can enlarge our perceptions of history, including personal history. For consider: If earthworms came to our continent with the colonists, then they necessarily have their places on the same historical timeline as their human importers. Just as the millions of today's descendants of the first European colonists can trace their ancestry to specific people and places, so the descendents of the earthworms who accompanied those pioneers must arrange themselves in a like heirarchy of arrival. Therefore, should you repine that your colonial pedigree isn't all that you might wish, five minutes' work with a garden spade can turn up an aristocrat, a Mayflower worm whose very presence in your vegetable patch must gentle your condition.

-Courtesy of the Farmer's Almanac.