What in the Wild?

Excerpt

Sample poem:

Lumpy Mounds

These lumpy mounds upon the ground, you may not recognize.
They're left behind once we have dined—that's how we fertilize!
We're long and lithe, we wriggle and writhe; of dead things we dispose.
We daily toil to plow the soil, and help stuff decompose!
_____________

What are they?
They're earthworm castings.

Sample "naturalist note" to support photos after creature is revealed:
Long and thin, squirmy and moist, lowly earthworms do mighty work. By spending their days 'worming' through the earth, wiggling and wriggling right and left, they work the soil much like a plow. That alone is a big job, but earthworms do even more. They are "decomposers"—creatures that consume dead plants and animals. The health of our planet depends on the work of decomposers.

Excerpted from What in the Wild? by David Schwartz. Copyright © 2010 by David Schwartz and Yael Schy. Excerpted by permission of Tricycle Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.