Tuesday morning’s stroll through the neighborhood was as much dog walk as nightcrawler watch.
Clear rainwater sweeping the gutters clean moved along a parade of worms, too. Long and fat, they pulsed forward, nearly single file, as though carried by some annelid public transport system.
Science, — or maybe naturalists’ lore — suggests that when it rains too much, earthworms suffer. Perhaps they become waterlogged and can save themselves only by hoisting themselves from the soil into what must instinctively seem like a safer, drier place.
Although it looked as though the hardy creatures that mine and aerate our lawns and gardens had finished their work in one spot and were merely migrating to another job, their travels had given them another purpose: food.
Savvy robins, starlings and finches were poised on curbs and low branches, swooping in to scoop up 6-inch noodles of squirming protein.
By the time I got home that night, the silvery strands of worms that crisscrossed the street had disappeared, into the earth or into gullets, their work done, or just beginning again. Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
