And just how did a woodpecker treat a peanut? He stored it, of course; not where he stored acorns which had to be shelled, but where he stored ready-to-eat food like grapes, in the large blue gum eucalyptus tree across the canyon. Behind its peeling bark went the peanuts I carefully shelled and put out for the baby woodpeckers, who never got so much as a sniff of one. Obviously more drastic measures were called for if I wanted the babies to get enough protein to develop normally. (By the way, that baffling bird B.T. showed as positive a liking for peanuts as he had a dislike for cashews.)
It was about this time that Ken and I were invited to visit for the first time the large aviary operated as a hobby by Paul Vercammen. A partial list of some of his more unusual species included black-cap and great reed warblers, grey wagtails, bullfinches, yellow buntings, stonechats, Mexican flycatchers, white-rumped shamas, golden orioles, saffron and lavender finches, nightingales, Pekin robins, purple sunbirds and emerald tanagers.
We were allowed inside while Paul gave the birds their morning feeding. It was holiday fare, indeed: quartered oranges and apples, peeled bananas, fresh ripe figs, raisins soaked in hot water to make them tender and plump, bread and cake crumbs, pieces of cheese, various cooked vegetables and of course, seeds of all kinds. But the favorite of most birds was what Paul fed them by hand for dessert, meal worms.
Meal worms, chock full of protein and obviously a bird favorite, seemed like the perfect food for our baby woodpeckers. On the way home we stopped at a pet store. Here we learned that meal worms were not worms at all but the larvae of darkling beetles, which were a dime a dozen except in pet stores where they were fifty cents a dozen. During their life cycle these beetles destroyed large quantities of flour and cereal; nevertheless they were bred commercially as food for birds. Some animals, like the smaller monkeys, were also fed meal worms to prevent or to cure arthritis. At the going price of four cents for a one-inch worm, medicine for monkeys seemed to have reached more dizzying heights than medicine for humans who could still get an aspirin tablet for a fraction of a penny.
Used medicinally meal worms were expensive enough. Offered as daily fare at a large feeding station they would have been prohibitive. Even I, who obstinately refused to face the economics of our bird feeding, had to concede that much. We couldn’t put out meal worms for the woodpeckers without the other birds demanding and getting their share. If, as Marie Beals had told me, a single robin consumed sixteen feet of earthworms in a day, he could be expected to consume an equal amount of meal worms, or 192 inches. At four cents an inch this would amount to $7.68 a day for each robin, or $2,803.20 a year — definitely not chicken feed.
There seemed only one reasonable solution: I would become a commercial breeder of darkling beetles. Ken took a very dim view of this idea, but Harry, the man at the pet shop, explained that it was as easy as rolling off a log. The beetles did the work; all I had to do was provide them with suitable living arrangements and food.
The initial equipment was simple and very cheap, considering what stupendously expensive little creatures — pound for pound in the same class as emeralds — were supposed to emerge from it. I washed and dried a ten-gallon tin can that had once contained beef fat for the birds. It had a tight-fitting lid in which I punctured some small holes for ventilation. Meal worms don’t require much oxygen, they do some of their best work in the middle of hundred-pound sacks of flour. On Harry’s advice I used as a flour substitute duck bran purchased at a feed and grain store for sixty-five cents. I added the meal worms and a large piece of burlap for them to cling to and a quartered apple for moisture. Then I clamped on the lid and put the whole thing down in a storage room on the lower floor where I figured the little creatures could go about their business, and mine, undisturbed.
Like many people new to a commercial venture I had dreams of glory — perhaps eventually I would become known as the meal worm queen of the Southwest — but the dreams were promptly undermined by labor troubles. Because what happened inside that ten-gallon can for the next month was nothing, absolutely nothing. I checked it every day — and every day, nothing. Ken suggested that the creatures might be inhibited by my surveillance, but I began to suspect more basic problems.
I phoned Harry at the pet store and accused him of giving me all-male or all-female stock. He explained that meal worms weren’t fussy about such things but they failed to develop sometimes if they were lonesome. What was probably the matter was that the can was too large for a mere dozen meal worms and they’d probably lost contact and couldn’t find each other.
“They can find each other,” I said coldly. “They’re just not trying.”
Harry had a solution: not a smaller can, of course, but more meal worms. If I could stamp out meal worm loneliness I would be back in business.
I drove down to the pet store. Harry had four dozen meal worms packed in a cardboard carton waiting for me. He assured me he’d picked the liveliest ones he could find and I could expect quick action provided all his instructions had been followed. Did I buy the right kind of bran? Yes. Did I remember the burlap and the pieces of raw apple or potato? Yes. Was I keeping their quarters warm and cosy at about 80°? No. The storage room was about as warm and cosy as the catacombs. I didn’t tell Harry. I just got out of there as fast as possible — before he could sell me a meal worm heater.
The big question then was, where would be the best place in the house to keep a ten-gallon can rather conspicuously labeled “Hoffman’s Pure Rendered Beef Fat”? Two rooms were eliminated immediately. Ken said that much as he liked to share things with his fellow creatures, his study and the lanai adjoining it were too cold. (And, his tone implied, they weren’t going to get any warmer if he could help it.) The kitchen, which seemed a logical place, was eliminated because it was hardly bigger than an orange crate and every nook and cranny was already filled with containers of bird seed, stale bread and doughnuts. For aesthetic reasons the living room was excluded, and since a can of meal worms would, in spite of their name, do nothing to enhance meals, so was the dining room.
The choice finally narrowed down, as I should have known it would, to my office. The meal worms, presumably no longer lonesome with the arrival of four dozen of their friends, were ensconced on top of a bookcase, just above a heating outlet, and my office was known from that time on as the Worm Factory.
Meanwhile the baby woodpeckers who were the reason for the factory’s existence had grown up. They showed no obvious signs of protein starvation or of malnutrition in general. They were fat, contented little creatures as they sat, often three and four at a time, around the rim of the wooden dish on the porch railing. They weren’t easily alarmed; in fact, their confidence in me distressed their parents, who tried to squawk some sense into their heads from the telephone pole or the eucalyptus tree, “Watch out, watch out, watch out!” In this imperfect world we share with the woodpeckers, maturation must include the learning of fears.
If I’d been informed that meal worms were slow and uncooperative and demanded a great deal of heat, I would never have started the project. I was already heartily sick of staring at that big ugly can on top of the bookcase and working in a room that was ten degrees too hot. But I was also reluctant to give up and admit defeat. If the protein was too late for this generation of woodpeckers, it would at least be ready for the next.
In late spring my niece, Jane, came to spend a weekend. She slept in my office, which doubled as a spare bedroom, and I overheard her describing the experience to a friend over the telephone: “It’s called the Worm Factory. No, they don’t crawl all over you, but even if they did it would be okay because they’re pets.”