worms

Second day of my two week holidays today and after spending a relaxing day in the country yesterday it was down to the real work today.
After doing a bit of shopping here and there Jenny and I finally made it to Bunnings. We headed straight on down to the garden section.
"Do you have worms?" I asked the guy as he headed towards me.
He smiled. "Well no actually, I don't" he smiled again.
Duh I thought to myself. Ask a stupid question.
He smiled at me again.
"But I think if you went back to aisle 22 you would find them about three quarters of the way down on the right hand side.
We trotted back to aisle 22 and sure enough there on the shelf next to the compost bins were boxes of worms.
I was amazed. Worms ...on the shelf. Then I began to wonder about their shelf life. How long could they stay there and still be viable?
I checked out the boxes. One lot contained 500 live worms and the other 1000. Wow 1000 seemed like a bit of overkill to me so I gently picked up the box labelled 500 live worms and made my way to the checkout.
At home I gently carefully unpacked the box. There seemed an awful lot of something in there but it didn't look like worms. Maybe they were past their use by date and I hadn't noticed. I decided I had better put on my reading glasses and actually read the box.
Oh! In smaller red writting it told me that this box contains" Worms - Worm Eggs - Castings - Food Fillers, and to please take the usual precautions as you would when dealing with any fertilizer related product. Mmmm so it doesn't look like there are actually 500 real live worms in my box and not only that does it also mean that my box of environmentallty friendly worms is actually toxic?