Today I waited until early evening to go to the market, to avoid the heat. It's only May but it's already getting uncomfortably warm in the midday hours. After a goodly walk in the sun I'm wont to come home with my shirt sticking to my back and my feet feeling like warm pickles inside the socks. So it was going to be a brief trip (the market is only two blocks down the street) in the fading sunlight, and I wasn't expecting to run across any photo-worthy sights; so imagine my surprise when I sighted a worm -- one of those extra-thick ones -- in the middle of the sidewalk.
I watched it for some moments to see if it was dead or at least had enough life left in it to be worth saving, and to my delight it moved -- but just barely. I really think it was on the border of death, as it didn't respond at all when I picked it up, but in any case I took out my knife, dug a hole in the verge and put the worm in it. I covered it up loosely with earth, feeling I was not sending it back to its native environment so much as I was giving it a burial.
Number of worms rescued: 80
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