Or you can have the experience I did with worm-keeping.
In approx. 1998, soon after we moved to this house, I decided to keep worms for compost in addition to the compost bin (BioStack) we had moved with us from Berkeley. I got what was then available, a box with a tap, screens around the top of the sides, and a "roof" that opened sort of like the "wing" storage boxes do now.
I purchased the worms from my favorite independent local nursery. They thrived until...winter 2002/2003, when I was teaching full-time *and* sick over the Christmas (excuse me: "Winter") break. It rained cats and dogs here, and I was pushed to the max taking care of the three dogs and three cats then in residence. One dog was 10.5 y.o., one was 9, and Vesta (still here!) was a pistol at 2.5 y.o. I developed bronchitis, and DH stayed on his computer the whole two weeks.
About mid-January, when I turned in semester grades, I had a Moment of Clarity and went, "What happened to the worms? Are they OK?" b/c I had asked DH to make sure the blackberries were pruned in late December and that the composts were "taken care of."
The worms had drowned in the rains. The open-able roof was not watertight, and DH never opening the leachate tap condemned them to drowning. I, of course, had been too pre-occupied with my own illness/need for rest and the dogs/cats to even *think* of the yard.
So we fast forward to Spring 2007. I'm helping my GF turn her compost pile--she also has a BioStack--and ask her for a quart of worms. I've acquired supplies and now want to have back-ups upon back-ups in case something dire happens again.
The worms now live in their Worm Factory (purchased at county/municipal discount) in the carport under an old army blanket. More of them live in the BioStack. I've given a "quart of worms" to several people via FreeCycle.
But I must say that the first worms did *not* double their number in anything close to a month or even three months. They took their time settling in and seem to have found an ideal population density. I don't find ever-increasing numbers of
Eisenia foetida in the Worm Factory or the BioStack; they seem happy as they are.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9