Stob? Rooping iron? Worm grunting???

If those terms mean nothing to you, don't worry - they didn't mean anything to me, either, until I read this article. A brief excerpt:

Know the saying about the early bird and what it catches? It's Gary Revell's credo. He likes to be in the Apalachicola National Forest in northwest Florida at daybreak, armed with a wooden stake he calls a stob, a heavy steel file he calls a rooping iron, and a mess of one-gallon cans in which he places the bounty he scares out of the ground. Earthworms. By the thousands. In our state there is no more unusual way of making a living than — take your pick — worm rooping, worm charming, worm grunting or worm fiddling. This is a place where science meets folk life, where the 21st century intersects with the old Florida of horseback and Model A Fords.

Kneeling in the dirt at dawn, Revell buries the stob 15 inches deep in the topsoil. Grasping the heavy iron roop with both hands, he leans his weight against the stob and commences a passionate rubbing.

The roop-on-stob collaboration produces the Sopchoppy Symphony, which has been performed in a remote section of Florida for more than a century.

The Sopchoppy Symphony, as Revell plays it, starts with groan and proceeds to a kind of mighty grunt, the kind a distressed 100-pound bullfrog might produce, an awesome, hair-raising, teeth-rattling sustained kind of grunt. First the earth begins to tingle. Then it quakes for dozens of feet in all directions.

Then things get really get weird.

Within seconds the ground explodes with earthworms. They writhe in what seems to be ecstasy, but is more likely terror — as if the demons from hell are pursuing them from the netherworld.

As Gary Revell plays the stob like a Stradivarius, his wife, Audrey, trots among the worms, plucking here, plucking there, filling bucket after bucket with fish bait.

There's lots more at the link, including a video clip, and some history about this weird - and lucrative - pastime. I've never heard of the like, and I have to admit to a reluctant fascination after reading it! It's certainly an antidote for all the depressing financial news with which we're beaten daily.

(Have I just recommended a video about summoning worms as an antidote to financial meltdown? Sometimes I surprise even myself!)



Peter