Hi I'm Walter the Worm and a member of the WasteBusters gang.

This compost heap is where I used to live. It used to be my home, where I lived, ate, slept and became a parent. I lived here with lots of my friends. We all belonged to the WasteBusters gang. We used to have lots of fun! I thought I had everything I needed when I moved here and made it my home.

I really loved it there. It was dark, damp and warm with loads of air passages throughout the heap allowing a little breeze to enter. I need air to breathe just like you. But I have not got a nose. I breathe through my skin, which needs to be kept moist. I don't know how you can breathe through those two little holes in your nose!!!!

I know my home might look yucky to you, but to me it was food and home all in one! We had a feast and it was really good to eat apple cores, toast, cooked and uncooked food ( I¹m not fussy! ), banana skins, dead leaves, eggshells and loadsa other waste food stuffs, which I love. I also enjoyed eating loadsa goodies such as coffee grinds, newspaper, garden waste and cardboard. I¹m partial to a brew myself and really appreciated the tea bags with a few old biscuits! The corrugated cardboard not only tasted great, it was cosy and warm to sleep in and I could lay my eggs in those long dark tunnels.

Sometimes people would cut their grass and weed their gardens putting piles and piles of it onto my home. After a day or two it felt like the roof was on fire! Boy was it hot! Too hot for me and my WasteBusters mates. I had to move further down the heap and away from the heat. I could have died, because of it. Luckily though my home was big enough for me and my mates to move away for a while. Then after a few more days it cooled down and we could move up again and start eating the dead grass and stuff.

But how can you eat all that stuff when you haven¹t got teeth I hear you say?

Well we suck up tiny pieces of grit which we find amongst the food waste and swallow them. We use these to grind our food up with. Some birds also do the same thing. They have n¹t got teeth either. Good eh?!

After we have eaten all the food scraps and stuff, a rich, black compost called vermicompost is left behind. This stuff is great for plants, lawns and vegetables. You can even use it on your houseplants and watch them all thrive. So instead of all our food being thrown in the bin and emptied at a big smelly tip, give it to us and we will eat it all up for your and give you vermicompost for your plants in return!

Then one day, someone put in some hamster and rabbit manure. I was not too keen on it at first; it didn't taste right. I think it needed weathering or something for a few days on the heap before I could eat it. After that it tasted much better and I love it now! I think the rabbit and hamster smell attracted a fox first and later a badger to our home late one night. They dug holes all around our home. Then they started to eat my friends up. In the daytime the birds also came along, and started pecking and scratching around the holes looking for me and my friends to gobble us up. I do not like being eaten! Our home was being raided! Then hedgehogs moved in and made their home in ours and a mole made regular visits near the ground floor, taking some of my friends away with him. It was too much to bear. My home was gradually being destroyed. One day it would be gone forever. I decided to leave. That's when I heard about a worm hotel. A Five Star Worm Hotel! Can you believe it? You can see pictures of it on this web site.

In here I have everything I need. Can you remember what I need?

Well, I don¹t like it too hot or too dry. I don¹t like sunlight. I certainly don¹t like being eaten or chased by creatures that want to eat me!!

A nice damp, dark and warm place to live, with plenty of food and air passages. I also have loadsa other WasteBusters in here to keep me company. Plus, I am safe in here from the creatures that want to eat me for their breakfast!

In here I get everything I ever needed. I even sometimes have a daily newspaper delivered, which I read at breakfast with a cuppa and toast! I prefer the Guardian myself as I can read and then easily digest it!

Making baby worms!

"This is another WasteBusters friend of mine, Wilma. Say Hello Wilma."

"Hi, Do you like my lipstick? Walter told me I was to be on the web so I put it on specially for you. I wanted to look nice!"

"Well kids, this is a little tricky for me to tell you this, erm.......!!"

"Go on Walter, tell them."

"OK, OK. Here goes. You see both me and Wilma have male and female parts, or reproductive organs. Yeah, I know it sounds funny to you humans, as some of you are boys and some of you are girls. Well we are different. We have both parts, if you know what I mean!!"

"Anyway, before we can have babies, we have to be old enough to be parents. You can tell if we are old enough as we have a ring, band or a saddle that goes right around our body. It¹s easy to see. It¹s about one third of the way down my body, from my head. If you want to see it and you want to pick me up, please wash your hands first and keep your hands a little wet. I like the wetness; it helps me to breathe. And remember to treat me gently. I don't have any bones so I am not as hard as you with your bones and I will flop around. Once you have had a look, watch me crawl along and then put me back into my house and again wash your hands."

"When we are feeling romantic we snuggle up to each other so our bands are touching with our heads in opposite ends, so my head would be where Walter¹s feet would be, only he does not have any feet!"

"Both of us make a sticky liquid that covers our bands, like a large sticky tube or donut! We are now bonded together. We then swop fluids, wait a while and wriggle out of the donut and that is what makes us pregnant! We both go away, lay our eggs with our baby worms inside the egg. The eggs, I suppose look like tiny pale lemons that can change colour as they get older."

If you want to see this, go out one damp, warm evening with a torch and you may see the bigger earthworms on your lawn making babies! I only make babies with other WasteBusters. I cannot make babies with other worms such as the earthworm you find on the lawn at night."

"Now in the worm hotel, there are loads and loads of us. How come we are not overcrowded? Well, although we can make lots and lots of eggs and baby worms, if our home started to get too overcrowded, there would not be enough food for us all and we would start to feel a little worried."

"Stressed out more like it!"

"So we stop making eggs, until there is enough room and food for us to start again!

But where do you come into this? By buying a very special unit, called an WASTE BUSTER and getting some WasteBusters worms you will be helping worms like me and Walter and all our friends to have a good life. We all now live in a 5-star worm hotel. They are very comfy and we love them!

" I hate any type of light: torchlight, bulb light and especially sunlight. I can feel when light touches my body. It makes me cross and if I am in the sunlight for too long, it can cause me pain and hurt, it can even kill me. I live in the dark so I get no sunlight. I am not used to it at all. I don¹t need it. It is damp where I live. The sunlight dries me out.

I wear the hat to protect my head from the hot sun, just in case! Well, that¹s my excuse. I also love to wear my sunglasses, I fell very cool and trendy in them! Do you like the hat and sunglasses?

Cartoon characters drawn, designed and displayed with knid permission of Chris Savage......