Born Free

I have never had to do this all these years, but in the last week I needed to hunt bugs for both Mister and Lamb.

First Mister needed roller bugs for his biology class. After school we searched around his mom's house, looking under every brick and under leaves. Nothing. We walked down to a park and scraped away leaves under the trees. No bugs.

So I went home later and on my patio under a bag of soil, the little suckers scampered away when I lifted the bag. Bagged a bunch.

Then, one day when Lamb and Mister had dinner with their grandparents after school, I get a call from lamb telling me she needs worms for school. She says the teacher told her that soaking the ground will get them to surface. Huh. That makes sense.

So I soak some ground outside and after 10 minutes I decided this was insane. Just how long would it take worms to burrow to the surface? Even if I soaked the ground enough to reach the worms?

So I dug up a plug of dirt close to a stream and waited for the worms to exit. Bingo. I got three and none were chopped in half from the plug extraction. I replaced the plug, put the worms in a cottage cheese container with a cut in the cover for air, and called Lamb to let her know I had success. She told me to put wet newspaper, lettuce, and coffee grounds in with them. Too late for the last, but I did the first two.

Then I find that she really didn't have to bring in worms but they had studied them and I think she wanted to do what her big brother did. Still, the worms were a hit at school, apparently. And when I picked her up after school she had the worms and wanted to return them to the wild.

She had also named all of them, offering an apology for naming the one she though was a boy worm "Slimy." (No offense, taken, I assured her). The girl worms were "Wormy" and "Squirmy." Why female kind shouldn't take offense at that, I did not ask.

So we took the worms back to the plug of dirt where I lifted it out and dumped the worms and lettuce in the hole and gently set the plug back in, careful not to crush them.

Then I broke into song: "Born free! As free as the wind blows! As free as the grass grows! Born free to follow your heart!"

Well, OK, I didn't. they are worms, after all.