What I will never understand ...

... is how, whenever I dig for worms on the beach, no matter how fast or furiously I dig, I hardly ever find any large enough to see with the naked eye.

And yet, the millions upon millions of worm poop piles are topped with ropes of worm poop icing fatter than the length of most of the worms.

For scale, the mud snails are 1/2 to 1 inch long. The grass is dwarf eelgrass; its blades are  about  1  1/2 mm. wide.

Half-submerged mound, a couple of inches high.

That's a lot of poop for a tiny worm!

Upper intertidal zone, Boundary Bay, mid-September.