Wormdom’s Wriggling Riddles

A heavy rainstorm pounded our neighborhood overnight. The next morning, worms covered the concrete and asphalt walkways like limp brown overcooked spaghetti.

It’s as if the alarms on their microscopic iSlimes all rang at once, simultaneously summoning their squirming bodies to the earth’s surface. Worms, in various states of consciousness, were everywhere. The writhing traffic jam extended for miles in every direction.

Whoever claimed that worms all look alike didn’t closely examine their wriggling bodies after a rainstorm. Some worms resembled the wet strings from mop heads, shorn from the mop and flung afar, strewn in lazy curls. Others crawled in straight lines, apparently driven by invisible GPS devices to arrive at pre-calculated destinations by the most efficient route possible.

Some fat ones had those mysterious wide and extravagant pink bands that apparently house organs that make cocoons for the eggs they lay. Somehow, they just look pregnant. There’s no worm quite so beautiful as a pregnant worm.

But why all the sudden worm traffic hubbub? How absurd was this night crawl in the rain!

Had they imagined they heard the Last Trumpet sound and hoped to not be left behind? Imagine if the entire human race imitated the behavior of these worms!

Even though worms are bi-sexual, they have to mate with other winsome worms. So, perhaps rainy weather proclaims Date Night in Wormtown, complete with a slimy pre-dawn happy hour to promote prenuptial courtships?

Some believe that the worm crawling is panic-driven. A worm in a burrow in a tsunami-intense rainstorm is a worm tangled in a knot and drowned. They’ve got to crawl out—and quickly—to stay alive.

These reasons for worms squirming from their burrows during rain are all conjectures.

Scientists tell us that the real reason worms locomote in the rain is to move to new lodgings. Since worms have to stay moist to stay alive, it’s the only safe time to crawl long distances—for a worm, that is—to explore new “digs,” so to speak. Digesting all those issues of House Beautiful magazine apparently persuades worms that the dirt must be browner on the other side of the ditch. They scurry over to check it out.

So what’s the real “skinny” on wormy wandering after a rain? There’s much conjecture, that much is certain.

It’s possible they are anxious for the future, their slimy stampede driven by disquiet and fright.

Maybe they actually do perform impassioned courtship rituals along quiet moonlight-splashed streets.

Who knows if they are panicked by fears of events unknown and the “what ifs” that could wash their lives away.

And maybe they do yearn to find that perfect life that extends just beyond their own ditch.

Perhaps the reason we try to understand these strange wormy behaviors is because, in some ways, there may just be a bit of worm in each of us.