I woke up this morning at 6:30 am to an incoming text message on my phone – it was my friend Andrew, who’d just gotten off work at his nightshift job, saying that “we need to go check out that flooding river right now today” … yeah, right. I rolled back over to return to sleep.
But … by 7:15 I was still lying in bed awake, so I decided to call his bluff.
By 8:00 am we were rolling down the highway in my ’71 Buick, heading south toward the still-rising waters of the flooded Minnesota River.
Cleo is ready to roll
Our first stop was Black Dog Road, which had been closed to traffic due to the swelling river. We parked the car nearby and hiked in on the deserted roadway, with Cleo the (black) dog scouting ahead. We weren’t far past the barricades when I almost stepped on a huge nightcrawler worm that was out in the middle of the road. The morning sun was starting to heat up the day, so I said “oh, little worm, you are SO lost!” and picked him up and hurled him out into the woods toward the river.
We continued onward – and soon saw that the waters were totally covering Black Dog Road not far ahead. On either side, water rose up and spilled onto the high ground crest of the roadway. Abruptly I realized that the road here was squirming with dozens and dozens of nightcrawlers and scrawled by their wet trails, where they’d wiggled onto the blacktop away from the rising river.
I’d never seen such a swarm of nightcrawlers before, and paused to take it in.
“You should collect a bunch and let them loose in your yard,” Andrew suggested.
It was a good idea – I’d been doing a lot of planting and gardening this year, and knew the huge worms would be helpful in conditioning the soil.
But I didn’t have anything to put worms in, so I looked around, pretty much expecting to find a coincidental piece of useful litter – a plastic bag, a water bottle, anything I could carry some worms in. But the sides of the road were surprisingly free of garbage – the only piece I could see anywhere was several yards ahead in the weeds along the road, white and papery looking.
As I walked nearer, I could start to make out words on the side of what appeared to be a cup … words that seemed oddly in line with my intention.
I burst out laughing as I stooped to pick up the only piece of debris in sight – a paper cup that once contained 20 nightcrawlers, sold as fishing bait.
nightcrawler cup
wild nightcrawler passes the worm cup
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