'Twas a dark and stormy night...

I used the back entrance when I left the office this evening, and as I was walking along the sidewalk in the shelter of the building, I noticed some weird little wet marks on the dry concrete. Now, it has basically been raining buckets all day, just as it did most of last night, so some wet splotches on the sidewalk weren't particularly unusual. But these marks were narrow little streaks that all came from the edge of the walkway and traced parallel straight lines, with the occasional graceful loop or sweeping curve. It took me a moment to notice that nearly every little trail ended in a big gruesome splooch.

Upon closer inspection, the trails that didn't end in messy splats each ended in a sprawled-out earthworm, agonizingly making its way across the concrete towards a ghastly doom under someone's foot. Now, I'm used to seeing earthworms emerging from rain-soaked dirt and pointlessly trekking out across treacherous sidewalks in places where there is grass and dirt and, well, nature. But what surprised me here is that there is no nature in this spot. My office is surrounded by asphalt and concrete, streets, sidewalks, and parking lots. Seriously, the only exposed earth is a tiny strip of decorative rocks with like one distressed bush losing its battle to exist. Yet there were a lot of worms.

Where were they going?

I'm sure the night guard was wondering what the hell I was doing, but I tried to save as many of the not-quite-dead-yet critters as I could hold in my slimy fingers, dropping them in the grate surrounding a tree out on the sidewalk next to the street, assuring that at least they would not be squashed.

Weird. And amazing. A little sad. And pretty gross.