Our Little Gray Helper.

By Myrta Lockett Avary

Annotations by Kathryn t. burt

We have a little gray helper who cannot hear, nor see, nor make any noise. He wears a little gray coat, and he lives in tiny caves which he burrows out for himself. Our little gray helper has no feet, so he crawls.

He works busily for us all day in the ground under our feet, coming out chiefly to get his food. Then he does not take anything which anyone wants, but only fallen leaves and bits of stuff which no one cares about, and which are best out of the way.

Although much less fortunate than we, having neither legs, nor feet, nor hands, nor eyes, nor ears, he has all that is necessary; and since our little gray helper has all he needs, and does his work, and does it well, we may think of him as being quite content and happy. And since the work that he does for us is very necessary and important work, and since he does it excellently well, we need not regard him with less than respect.

He has a system of blood-vessels[1], a nervous-system[2], and—yes, a brain. When you come to consider him under a microscope and in relation to the work he has to do, he is quite an interesting and exquisite bit of mechanism. He uses his brain, and has wisdom to know what to eat and how to get it. Though he has neither eyes nor hands, before taking anything into his cave, he examines it carefully by means of his one sense (touch), and with his little upper lip, which the scientists call prostomium. This lip is very sensitive.

He is prudent[3] and thrifty[4], always dragging into his little house enough to secure him against the coming day, for blind and deaf as he is, he knows it is not wise to be out in the day-time, for the birds and their babies like him entirely too well. He also knows that, being of a chilly nature, he will need to be wrapped up a bit when he goes to sleep in his cave, so he makes his own little bed of blades of grass and bits of leaves which he has dragged in with the little lip that does so much. He seems to like fresh air when he can get it, so he rests with his head near the mouth of his cave; and Mother Nature, realizing that this might give Robin Redbreast an unfair advantage of him, provided him with a head-covering darker than the rest of his coat, and very nearly the color of earth.

Now, do you want to know what work it is our little gray helper does for us? To look at him you could never dream how important it is. Perhaps we might call him a farmer, since he tills the soil. Do you know that lands where trees and plants and flowers and fruits and abundant grains and grasses grow would be barren deserts but for the little gray worker?

Darwin watched the ways of this little gray worker for years and years, and found that his office was to prepare and fertilize the soil. He carries down layer after layer of stuff, and brings up layer after layer of loam, thus giving each layer its chance at sunlight and air. That which he carries down into Mother Earth’s workshop is bits of dead leaves, decomposing matter, and unsightly stuff; and Mother Earth feeds with this the roots of flowers and trees and vegetables and grain and grasses. To do this important work well, there is needed a great number of little gray workers: about 57,000, it is said, to an acre of pasture-land, and more to keep a garden what it should be. For every acre the little gray workers turn up from seven to eighteen tons of earth annually.

Do you know, now, who our little gray helper is? I will tell you. He is only the little earth-worm—crawling along, blind, deaf, and dumb[5] at your feet!

Avary, Myrta Lockett. 1898. “Our Little gray helper.” ST. NICHOLAS: AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE FOR YOUNG FOLKS, ED. MARY MAPES DODGE, 25, no. 2 (May 1898 – Oct 1898): 673. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101065275008&view=1up&seq=157.