Can of Worms Claim Lands on Dung Heap
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COLOGNE, West Germany — A pensioners’ club lost a two-year legal battle Wednesday when a court rejected compensation for a million Chilean dung worms that the city of Cologne borrowed from the club and failed to return.
The pensioners, from the Eifel Mountains village of Stadtkyll, farm the Eisenia Foetida worms and sell the worms’ high-grade dung to gardeners.
The city borrowed them in 1981 for an experiment in turning organic waste into usable compost. However, most of the worms escaped before they and their rapidly bred offspring could be returned.
“If they’d fed them right, they wouldn’t have wriggled off,” said one pensioner, adding that theoretically there could now be a billion dung worms tunneling under Cologne.
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