I pick up worms on rainy days.\u00c2\u00a0 I try to do it in a casual way, when nobody’s looking, but in such a manner that if someone did notice me, I’d seem to be acting on a whimsical impulse, rescuing one worm for no real reason.<\/p>\n
But I pick up pretty much every worm I pass, if it’s still alive.\u00c2\u00a0 An earthworm is a good creature.\u00c2\u00a0 It does no harm to anyone at all, and a whole world of good beneath the surface. I move them from the puddles on the sidewalk back into the grass, and cover them up with a leaf.<\/p>\n
An earthworm is not gross.\u00c2\u00a0 The profound vulnerability of the earthworm makes it a little repulsive, but only in the way that weakness makes us afraid.\u00c2\u00a0 The sudden way they squirm and wiggle when you pick one up is alarming too – it’s strange to see such vigorous life in a creature with no head, no limbs, no obvious senses.\u00c2\u00a0 But strangeness and vulnerability does not add up to gross.<\/p>\n
Worms are abundant.\u00c2\u00a0 They say the weight of the worms beneath a farm is greater than the weight of the animals on the surface.\u00c2\u00a0 Worms are essential to the health of the ground, the plants that grow in the ground, the creatures that live on the plants.<\/p>\n
Worms are hermaphrodites: each creature is both male and female. They reproduce in pairs, but each worm is a completely equal partner.\u00c2\u00a0 They are wonderfully weird.<\/p>\n
Worms can sense light and dark through their skin.\u00c2\u00a0 They strongly prefer to stay where it’s dark, and come above-ground at night more often than in the day.\u00c2\u00a0 Worms breathe through their skin, too, and they have to stay moist to breathe.\u00c2\u00a0 When it rains, worms come to the surface not to avoid drowning in the soaked soil, but because they are safer in the dim light and wet air than they would be on a bright, dry day.\u00c2\u00a0 Basically, in the rain, worms can come above ground and travel to exciting new places, because they can breathe better than on a sunny day.<\/p>\n
A worm that comes above ground and gets eaten by a bird has filled an important place in the cycle of life.<\/p>\n
A worm on a wet sidewalk is having an adventure, taking a grand opportunity to leap out into the dangerous, bright territory of birds and air, like a person in flight.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, if the worm is headed toward a large stretch of pavement, it will be trapped above ground when the rain stops and (if it hasn’t been stepped on yet) it will have nowhere to hide when the sun comes back out.\u00c2\u00a0 A dried up dead worm doesn’t even interest birds.<\/p>\n
A worm that comes above ground and gets stuck in a sidewalk puddle and roasted to death in the sun, is wasted.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if the molecules of the worm’s body return to the earth, the life of the worm: its chemical energy, its ability to change the earth it moves through, its essential weirdness – all that is wasted.<\/p>\n
There are an awful lot of earthworms.\u00c2\u00a0 It probably doesn’t matter if a few get wasted.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re pretty much all alike.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t have plans, hopes, ambitions, or motives; they are not unique individuals, not sentient, not afraid.\u00c2\u00a0 They do not demand compassion for any of those reasons.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not like I can pick up every single worm.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if I could, people would think I was nuts.<\/p>\n
They’re just moving, mostly forward, not totally blind but completely vulnerable, through space that might become dangerous at any moment, in the direction of the unknown.\u00c2\u00a0 Even in their hermaphroditic, limbless, headless weirdness, in the brief moment when we pass one another on the sidewalk in the rain, they seem a lot like us.<\/p>\n
__________<\/p>\n
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