Spring is coming in fits and starts. One day it’ll be 70 degrees, the next it’ll rain, and the next it’ll snow. The sky hangs low day in and day out with thick gray clouds that reach their damp fingers into my neck, my hip, my foot, my mood. But my plight pales in comparison with the poor earth worms’ worries.

Yesterday as I went to my car I had to step carefully, picking my way through worms struggling away from their water-logged holes. How could they know they were stretching toward the opposite fate? How could they know that the pavement would fry them as soon as the rains stopped?

Unable to watch them reaching toward certain death, I started collecting them and placing them on higher ground, away from puddles and asphalt. Worm after worm protested in terror as I picked it up, and then it’d wriggle away as soon as it hit the moist earth. But there were too many. I could have spent all day rescuing worms just from my driveway. So I finally satisfied myself that I had cleared away the worms that had been in my car’s direct path and then drove away to work, trying all the while not to think of all the worms littering the streets between myself and my office.

And the rains have continued. Now the whole town smells of spring, moist earth, and crushed worms.