How earthworms get up into five gallon buckets?

is a mystery to me. Can it really have climbed up the side of a slick plastic bucket, over a horizontal lip for latching the lid, and then on into the bucket?

Commando earthworms!! You must have somethin mighty good inside that bucket!!

Rainwater!

Well then it was probably looking for a friend. A little worm romance in the rainwater :)

Got racoons? I had a bucket sitting out when it rained. Bucket filled with water... coons dug up worms in compost pile and washed them in the bucket. Result...a few dropped worms drowned in bucket of rainwater...and me looking into adding a strand of electric fence wire around the yard...

I hadn't considered that possibility!

Fresh hatched earthworms are very very tiny. They can tag along with almost anything, soil or organic whatever. You will never see them. Then they get fat munching on goodies in the bucket. I am assuming there is dirt in the bucket. Empty bucket? Then the worms must be part octapus octipus eight armed sea creature with suckers(where spell checker when I need it).

This message was edited Apr 9, 2008 12:02 AM

WildcatThicket- Aha- there is a little dirt in the bucket. It seems possible that they were hiding in that, then when the rains came, they got all swollen up and appear much bigger than they were in life. (They are still prettty small) Thanks for a new hypothesis!
Sorry about the acktypous thing tho! LOL