Saturday morning Sampson, Delilah and I headed back to the scene of the crime. You know, the place where Delilah tried to kill me.

The day was mild enough and I was wandering along behind the dogs, enjoying the smell of early spring on wet grass (it had rained the night before) and of course keeping my eyes sharp for challenges.

There are a LOT of dogs in and around our neighborhood on e-fences.  I know where most of them are and do my best to cross the street so we are not on the same side.  (It makes wrangling easier, if we are across the street from the barking dog.) Sampson and Delilah are really good about it, all I say is, cross the street and they willingly oblige.

This probably explains why I didn’t notice it right away, because the street we were on has dogs on the e-fence on both sides of the street, but only about one house apart.  Yes, it WAS early, but one never knows when someone will open their door and just let the dogs out.

Who let the dogs out?

Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof.

Sorry, that song got stuck in my head for a minute.  Now it’s stuck in yours.  You’re welcome.

Anyway, we were just passing the second house when I looked down in the street and noticed the…worms.  There were a lot of worms in that one particular spot.  Then I looked around me.  There were more worms and even more worms, everywhere in the street I looked, I saw worms.

See how the worm turns?

Now I’m not necessarily a screamer.  I mean if I see one ant or spider crawling in the house, I calmly kill it.  But if I lift up a paper and 100 ants run at me, odds on favorite, I’m going to scream.

Like a girl.

So when I looked around me and saw I was literally surrounded by worms, I had to hold back a scream.  I mean, it was a war zone for worms.

It reminded me of Tremors. Except these worms weren’t that big.  THANK DOG. And they weren’t popping up out of the ground swallowing things either.  Phew, that’s a weight off.

You know when you have a heavy rain storm that brings down a whole bunch of twigs and debris?  It looked like that.

At first I thought there must be hundreds of worms and then I looked around some more and realized there weren’t hundreds of worms, there were thousands of worms!

Oh look, it’s a worm. I wonder if you can eat them?

Sampson and Delilah could give two figs if they step on a worm or not, but I won’t knowingly step on a worm.

It’s like Twister.  With worms instead of colored squares.  And no, I’m not putting my hand down there.

I mean they’re SQUISHY.

Suddenly, I’m worried about where I’m putting my feet.  I mean, worms are slimey, and the road is wet.

What if I slip on a worm? Or slip on a worm and fall?  Then I’ll be lying in the wet road, surrounded by worms.

Why oh why couldn’t I discover the worms when I got to the end of the street?  Why did I have to see them in the beginning?  Now I had to walk the entire street, trying to play Dodge Ball with worms.

UGH.

I’ve never seen so many worms at one time.  Nor do I ever want to again to be truthful.  But it did get me wondering, just what all those worms were doing in the street. I mean, do they have a Mardi Gras for worms?  

I looked for beads, nothing.

Hubby said it was because of the rain.  So I googled it.

Some people believe the worms come out of the ground in a hard rain to keep themselves from drowning.

“Dr. Dennis Linden, Cindy Hale, and other worm experts say that worms do NOT surface to avoid drowning. In fact, they come to the surface during rains (especially in the spring) so they can move overland. The temporarily wet conditions give worms a chance to move safely to new places. Since worms breathe through their skin, the skin must stay wet in order for the oxygen to pass through it. After rain or during high humidity are safe times for worms to move around without dehydrating. It is true that, without oxygen, worms will suffocate. But earthworms can survive for several weeks under water, providing there is sufficient oxygen in the water to support them.” Source

I also read that sometimes if it rains hard enough, the sound of the rain hitting the ground sounds like predators such as moles, and the worms will leave the earth to flee their predator. Source.

Makes me wonder if I should get a pet mole, just to stave off the worms.

A mole?  You can eat those right?