The Worm

I remember it had just finished raining; that particular fresh rain smell

still permeated the air. I was walking with my head in the clouds, thinking

of nothing consequential, when something caught my eye. On the ground

I saw a long, plump earthworm that had come out of its home due to the

rain. When I was little, my mother once told me that earthworms come out

of the ground because they like the moisture. As I got older, I never really

questioned this, never really contemplated it. I always assumed the rain

meant the worms were having a good time. This all changed after a conver-

sation I recently had with my roommate on another rainy spring afternoon,

much like the one my mother and I had shared years before and the one I

was experiencing that day. I recalled my roommate making the comment

that the worms were out. To this, I absent-mindedly responded, "They like

the rain." I was merely regurgitating my mother's explanation that had

carried me through all these years. My roommate shattered this childhood

belief (one of the last) when she replied, "Like it! The worms have to come

out of their homes or they would drown!" I had never even considered this

possibility though it was much more logical than my mother's idealization.

Not that I really blame my mother for the false information. She probably

didn't know the real answer either. So anyway, this long, plump earthworm

was sitting on the sidewalk after being flooded out of its home, and I probably

wouldn't have given it a second thought except a bird appeared just as I was

passing the worm on my predestined course. My first inclination was to save

the displaced worm from its horrible fate of slow digestion in the bird's

stomach. But the cosmos seemed to stop for me as I contemplated the dilemma.

If I saved the worm, then I would be denying the bird its meal in which case

it would subsequently starve (theoretically). And perhaps this bird had a

family and was taking the worm to a nest full of baby birds. Then I would

have a whole nest full of dead birds on my conscience. Who am I to choose

the life of the worm over the life of the bird? I walked on.