And yet, sprinkled in small quantities over the nitrogen-parched farms of North America, the stuff worked miracles. The first ships carrying Peruvian guano arrived in the 1840s and quickly sparked a mania. It was, crowed the Cleveland Herald, the “cheapest, most powerful, enduring, and portable fertilizer” of all. Tall tales spread, about the father who locked his ten-year-old son in a barn with a pile of guano and unlocked it hours later to discover a full-grown man in his place, or the farmer whose guanoed cucumber plants shot out of the dirt and seized him with their vines.
