When heavy rains come, the driveways and sidewalks flood with earthworms. Long, skinny, pink ones; fat, short brown ones. Together but alone, they evacuate the sodden dirt under our lawns to seek refuge on hard concrete.
There they will die – smashed under tires or shoes, plucked up by predators, or slowly dehydrated to a brittle curl under the eventual sun.
I want to rescue them.
Tiptoeing across the driveway, I pick up a writhing earthworm the width of cooked spaghetti and drop it in my dry jacket pocket for safekeeping.
Then another, no longer than my pinkie and just as meaty, goes into the opposite pocket. It squirms and fights against the absorbent cottony lining.
Moving deftly down the drive, I deposit a third worm in the waterproof hood hanging like an open mouth at my back.
I stare down the cement sidewalk. There are so many at risk.
Suddenly frantic, high on salvation, I run through the rain, scooping them up in fistfuls wherever I can find them. Wet knuckles scrape and bleed. Soggy dirt lodges under nails.
Soon dozens of worms flail and undulate in my barren pockets, the arid trap of my hood, the moisture-less sleeves of my coat.
Save me, I hear them cry, save me.
Still, they die.