The Day I Mailed Something To The Kid That Was Alive

Poor The Kid.  I mean, it's really not his fault...unless you count that he's the youngest.  Then it's totally his fault.

Yesterday I didn't go to work because I felt "under the weather".  I was mostly fine by the morning, but Joey still made me stay home.  (I didn't complain too hard, I slept in until 9:30!) 

Henry was being a wiggle worm by that point, so I decided I'd take him on a walk.  A short walk so I didn't over-exert my "under the weather" self.  It was absolutely gorgeous yesterday, 75 degrees, clear sky...perfect.

So off we went.  Henry pranced gaily and I enjoyed the quiet.  Sometimes I don't take my pinkPod when I go on walks so I can enjoy nature, and this was one of those mornings.  The worker-men were wrapping Christmas lights on the trees along the boulevard and it was, basically, the perfect morning.

Henry and I turned to walk down different street and suddenly I noticed hundreds and hundreds of dead worms on the sidewalk.  Talk about ruining the perfect morning.  Some of them had dried/died with their heads (or was it their tails?) up into the air so that they made muted crunching noises when I unfortunately stepped on them.

Not that I could miss them if I wanted to...they were everywhere.

I stopped for a moment and looked down at the worm-covered sidewalk and wondered how all the wormies got there.  Henry was getting bored.

I decided to start walking again and stop thinking about the dead worms and what forced their mass exodus from the dirt when, suddenly, I noticed something very interesting.

It was a long, fat, windy worm.  Alive.  And squiggling his way towards Henry and I.

"Look, Boo!  A wormie!"  I said, pointing to the worm.  Henry looked the opposite direction.

"No, Boo, look here."  I tried to point his head at the scrunching worm, but he was absolutely distracted by a stick in the road.  Dogs.  But then that's what I get for treating my dog like I'll treat my kid someday, making them look at all sorts of wildlife that's generally considered disgusting but that I think is actually cool.  <sigh>

Finally, Henry noticed the worm.  He put his little wet nose down to sniff the worm and, quite suddenly, the worm reacted violently and began flipping and flapping all over the sidewalk.

Henry jumped back and looked up at me as if to say, "Mommy!  You didn't tell me it was going to do that!"

Hmmm, I thought, A worm with some attitude...

And it was then that my plan began to form. 

Henry tried to sniff the worm again, but the worm was speedily making his escape towards the safety of the grass.  I bent down and began to try to catch the worm before I lost my opportunity.

After several tries, I successfully caught the worm.  I enclosed it in my hand where he sat, wiggling rapidly. 

"Come on, Henry.  Let's go mail this worm to The Kid,"  I said.  Henry didn't have a clue what I said, but he didn't really seem to much care.

I got home and found a small, cheap plastic container that I filled with dirt.  I sprayed the dirt so the worm would have some moisture, then I dropped the worm inside and closed the lid after carefully poking air holes so it could breathe.

Henry had completely lost interest at this point, so I put him in his kennel and left for the post office. 

Outside the post office there was a man sitting against the wall, shaking quite like a leaf and rocking back and forth while stroking a brightly colored blanket he was holding.  I thought he might be on something, so I parked as far away as possible and clutched my purse tightly as I walked inside.

"Hey gorgeous!"  He yelled at me, thus confirming my previous thought that yes, he was on something.  I was also glad that I'd parked far away from him.

Into the post office I walked carrying the worm container in my hand.  A helpful postal-worker lady walked up to me and asked, "What are you trying to mail?"

I am serious, she asked me that.

"Um...." I tried to figure out what to say.  ("A worm" just didn't seem like the best answer to give.)  "Something that will go in a padded envelope," I recovered quickly.

"Oh, well then you're in the right spot."  She said and then she left.  I was relieved.

I turned my back to the postal worker employees and shoved The Kid's live worm into the padded envelope. It barely fit.  I added the nice little note card and a couple other things to the package before taking it up to get the appropriate amount of postage.

"Is there anything fragile, breakable or perishable in here," asked the desk clerk.

Gosh!  A worm is sort of all of those and sort of not!

"No."  I said, wondering if I had lied.

She put a postage sticker on the envelope and said, "It'll be there 3 business days."

And that's how I mailed a live worm to my brother who lives in Ohio.  Considering how annoyed he was when I mailed him the dead cicada skin a few months ago, I'm not really sure how this "gift" will factor on the annoyance scale. 

I just live to annoy my little brother.  (Wait, isn't it supposed to be the other way around?!)

Bad news:  There's no mail delivery on Monday, the day the worm was supposed to arrive in Ohio. So...let's just hope the worm's not totally dead by the time it gets there.  It's probably going to be Tuesday and, well, Thursday to Tuesday is 6 days.  That's a very long time.

Poor wormie.