Saving the Worms

On last Friday (as I do each Friday) I took my dog Boo to a little sculpture garden at the end of my street that is part of the Menil complex of museums, homes, apartments and businesses. It has a lot of green space and is good for playing fetch with Boo. Adjacent to the green space is a long parking lot that is used primarily as overflow parking for events at the museums nearby. It had been raining all day and as I drove into the lot I noticed a woman with a large white dog and umbrella picking something up out of a pool of water in parking lot. I assumed at first that she might be picking up the dog's poop.

I parked and waited a moment to let Boo out because I did not want to startle her if my dog ran up to hers. After a few moments of watching her pick things out of the water I realized she was not picking up poop. Or if she was she was doing so without the benefit of a device or poop bag as she was using her bare hands. I let Boo out and he ran past her dog, much more interested in the ball I tossed into the grass. Then the woman looked up at me and said almost apologetically "Oh, I am saving the worms from drowning". I thought: Whaa? Saving worms from drowning? I asked what the worms did before human-kind began roaming this earth. She just responded "Worms are very important to the environment" and continued to pick a few more out of the shallow puddle. I was so dumbfounded that I couldn't think of anything else to say except to thank her and that I would appreciate her rescue efforts the next time I went fishing.

Now I don't know if it is worse for a worm to die in a puddle of water or at the end of a fishing line. But I am sure that goofy woman probably does not fish. And what if a worm at the end of an inept fisherman's line drowns awaiting the bite that never comes? In any case, miss "save the worms" was not much of an environmentalist. In her zeal to save the worms she completely overlooked the discarded gallon plastic milk jug right in the middle of the green space. That item was left for me to "save".