Earthworms

A meteorologist on public radio yesterday declared that the temperature for that day was about normal for this time of year. It was May 28 and the temperature hovered between 55 and 60 degrees. He said that on the same date last year the temperature reached 94 degrees.

            In fact, though April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, this year May showers may lead to June flowers, but little sun shine is forecast over into the first week of June, and there has been little Springtime weather in these here parts sufficient to raise the grass enough to require mowing. As this May concludes, I can remember a very few number of days when short sleeve shirts did not need to be layered under a sweater and on which I might don my summer shorts and sit outside and savor War and Peace. (Kutozov is in dire straits right now and Napoleon and his army march toward the Russians with the intent to destroy it. And the weather isn’t too favorable for them either!) I haven’t seen the sun in days!!

            Maybe the weather man is correct. Perhaps the present temperatures are, indeed, normal for this time of year. Perhaps the damp and the cold are not the result of global warming but are the result of the particular longitude and latitude in which I live. But I declare something is not right! Here it is the end of May and I have not experienced the mass exodus of the earthworms from their winter hibernation in the ground. In all the years that I recall (and that is not a few here in the mid-west), the warmer rains in April defrost and loosen the soil enough to permit the earthworms to crawl up onto the surface and wriggle about doing whatever earthworms do when they are not becoming food for birds. In a regular year these earthworms exit the ground and line the pathways in such vast numbers that it is almost impossible not to crush them as I wend my way somewheres else. Our car tires smash them into the concrete and our Wellington boots disfigure their front and rear ends.   But this year I have seen only one earthworm and it looked very lonely, even lost, out there on the path before the cabin. No, the lack of earthworms suggests that something is quite amiss.