The Verdict -- Robert Gardner

I see from the press that some locality is having trouble with army

worms. I had not heard nor thought of army worms for probably 80 years. I

had assumed they had disappeared from the face of the earth. Not so. They

have reappeared.

For the uninformed, army worms are not like the common earthworm with

which we are all familiar. Rather, they operate on the surface of the

ground and are not the least bit beneficial. I know.

When I was a small child, I lived in the little railroad town of Green

River, Wyo. One day, with no warning whatsoever, great armies of surface

worms appeared, usually in masses about the size of bed sheets.

They would hit a lawn and, presto, the lawn would be gone. However,

this wasn’t too much of a problem in Green River because there were very,

very few lawns. However, those little rascals did present a problem when

they hit the rails of the railroad. The engine would pass over them,

squash them, the tracks would get slippery, the engine wheels would spin

helplessly and the train would stop.

This, in a town that lived off the railroad, was unacceptable. And so

the railroad placed two men on the cowcatcher in front of the engine,

each armed with a sack of sand. These men would sprinkle sand on the

tracks so that the engine would get some traction and off the train went.

This, of course, cost the railroads money, but there wasn’t much they

could do about it. Passing a law outlawing army worms would be somewhat

of an act of futility.

And then, presto, just as quickly as they arrived, the army worms

disappeared.

But, as I say, they seem to have reappeared. If there are tracks in

those areas, my suggestion to the railroads is to buy up all the sacks of

sand they can. As for the rest of us, just get used to walking carefully,

because when you are walking over a sea of army worms it’s a lot like

walking over ice. Perhaps cleats on the shoes are the answer, noisy but

effective.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.