Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture
(C) Copyright 1994
Pamela Lee, Spring Gillard, Michael Levenston
We love the TV show "Seinfeld" so much that we decided to write some ideas for an episode and mail them to Jerry's office in a plastic worm bin complete with a stripped-up newspaper bedding and jelly worms which are colourful candies of the texture of ju jubes. (Real red wriggler worms would probably die and stink after a few days in snail-mail.)
We gather the response we got was typical. Not a peep!
Since we were tickled by our own brilliance we thought we'd share our ideas on the Web.
What's The Deal With Worm Composting?
Elaine's new environmentalist boyfriend gets George a job as a wormshop instructor.
George must keep a worm bin at home to learn how it's done however he knows his parents won't let him. Secretly he sets it up behind some boxes in the pantry.
To feed his worms George suddenly becomes interested in making large salads, spending hours in the kitchen aggravating his mother.
Fruit flies multiply in the bin and in no time the air in George's house is thick with swarms of the insect. His parents are mortified. George takes care of the problem by chasing around the house with a handheld power vacuum.
Elaine tries to explain the sex life of worms to the boys. Worms are hermaphrodites each worm having both sex organs. Some produce offspring by themselves. George is impressed being a master of his domain.
Jerry is pressured into starting a wormbin. He really doesn't want to but succumbs to environmental guilt and a desire to compete with Elaine's new man.
He mixes the bedding in the bathtub as George has instructed but clogs the drain and has to pay $100. for a plumber to unplug it. The bin only cost him $25.
George moves his worm bin out to the balcony off his bedroom to avoid fruit flies. A roof rat eats through the plastic bin and nests in the bin. Unsuspecting, George opens the lid and is bitten. He is convinced he has rabies. Elaine shows no sympathy.
Meanwhile they discover that Kramer is a master wormer. For years he has been letting worms eat his garbage in a deluxe mahogany bin which he keeps in his living room, an elegant piece of new age furniture, covered with African statuary. George has been sitting on it during his evangelical tirades.
All are impressed till Kramer offers them up lunch, which they eat, but then discover has been whipped up from his favourite gourmet worm recipe book.
Jerry has left his worms in the little bucket they were shipped in and has not transferred them to the bedding in the large bin as he is supposed to. (The worms need more air.) At night, while he sleeps, 2000 worms leave the little bucket and spread themselves over the floor of his apartment (worm crawl). When he awakes and steps out of bed, Jerry squashes some and keeps squashing them as he runs out the door hysterical.
Kramer's friend, a kooky zoology Professor at a New York museum, is leading a secret expedition into the sewers of New York to search for a new species of worm that will speed up the process of decomposition in the bin. Kramer convinces the others that they can make a fortune if they get a hold of this worm.
Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer go along on the expedition, get lost and are taken prisoner by illegal Chinese immigrants who are living secretly in sewer villages under the streets of New York's Chinatown. Kramer befriends them by teaching them some of his stir fry worm dishes and then makes a deal for their escape with the underworld leader by cutting him in on the worm profits. The Chinese believe they are getting a species of worm that is ten feet long (an Australian worm).
George convinces Jerry it is safe to return to his apartment, telling him that the worms will all have returned to the small bin. "That's their instinct." Jerry opens the door of his apartment and is greeted with the smell of 2000 dead worms. He screams and is violently sick to his stomach. Dead worms smell like cadavers. (This is worse than the car smell.)
