1/20/2001

Wisconsin State Journal

By Natasha Kassulke

Travor Bussey's lunch on Friday was a hearty helping of 50 fried earthworms.

"That's not too bad," Bussey told students and staff who gathered in his science classroom at Fort Atkinson High School. "Tastes like French fries. A little gritty."
Then he gulped another worm.

Bussey, 34, pledged to his students at the beginning of the year that he would eat one earthworm (also known as night crawlers) for each "A" that they earned.

Friday he kept his promise.

While his previous worm-eating record was 37, Bussey topped that with 50. Students who earned A's also joined an elite club called the Dead Worm Society, which Bussey founded five years ago.

He got the idea from watching the movie "Dead Poets Society" and was inspired by the line about "sucking the marrow out of life."

In addition to getting a stomach-churning spectacle, Bussey's students were awarded gummy worms, rubber worm fishing lures, and Dead Worm Society certificates.

The worms were washed, fried in Crisco at 300 degrees, stirred with a spatula for a couple minutes and eaten as finger food right from the pan. Three lighted candles set the mood. The pan sizzled and the pungent smell of cooking crawlers filled the room.

"Oh, that wasn't done," Bussey said chewing a juicy worm and drawing groans from his audience. "That's like a eating a rubber band."

"You should finish chewing before you talk," one student scolded.

Bussey has a "Survivor" mentality and isn't opposed to eating worms raw, but he prefers to cook them so that he won't get sick. As he stirred the greasy worms, he quizzed the students about worm trivia, such as the phylum that the night crawler belongs to (segmented worm Annelida).

Slowly, the once juicy night crawlers shrunk to crisp, dried, sidewalk-style worms. Bussey reached for a glass of water.

"I thought the worms might be bigger," Dead Worm Society member Kathryn Averkamp, 14, noted.

Bussey had prefaced his feast by explaining the deeper motivation behind the meal.

He stacked dominoes and tapped them to make them fall and make his point that each life can affect another and he is trying to inspire his students to become scientists and to find cures that can save lives.

Setting an old hat and a worn pair of work boots on a desk he talked about his grandfather, a carpenter and his longtime fishing buddy, who had worn them. His grandfather died nine years ago of Alzheimer's disease.

"What's it all about?" Bussey asked the class. "What if one of my students got excited about science and went into medicine? They might have found the cure to Alzheimer's and could have given my grandfather a few more years and I could have gone on a few more fishing trips with him. . . . Enthusiasm and passion will take you to great places."

Meagan Urbain, 15, was enthusiastic about the meal and moved to the front of the class when Bussey asked for volunteers to try the fried worms.

"They're actually pretty good," Urbain said, acting on a dare from a classmate. "They're just a little dirty - like when you ate a mud pie when you were a kid. I think I'll chug a gallon of water and brush my teeth now."

Bussey pledged to make the next class do the dishes. While he says his job is to inspire his students to cast a bigger shadow in life than he has, that goal comes at a risk.

Indigestion.

Rubbing his full stomach, Bussey said, "I think I might have to burp."
 

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