Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Might As Well Give Her a Pith Helmet and a One-Way Ticket to the Far Reaches of the Globe



You know Val is a sucker for scientific discoveries, right? It’s the science teacher in her. She has a thirst for new research findings. She yearns for them. And this morning her unconscious wish was granted.

I stepped out of T-Hoe, pulled my granny panties out of my crack before I was on camera for the rest of the day, walked around T-Hoe’s trunk, and saw THIS:



Yeah. That’s one honkin’ huge earthworm!

I tried to get a decent picture with my phone, there in the shadow of T-Hoe. The parking line is there to show scale. If I had been goin’ fishin’, that worm could have lasted all day. Kind of like a Slo-Poke sucker. Except I wasn’t planning to lick that earthworm, but to slice it into slivers the right dimensions to cling to a hook.

I have no idea where this behemoth came from. The earth, I suppose. But normally we only see those squirmy thin worms that crawl out onto the blacktop to die. This thing was as big as a baby snake. Bigger!

When I catch such a specimen, and find that it is, indeed, a record-setter, I might just name my new species Val’s Universeworm. In Latin, of course. If I can bend the genus and species names around my idea. It’s not as easy to name a new species as it is to name a star. Or an element.

Let the record show that I would have cropped this picture, and fiddled with the contrast and brightness, except that ever since Genius built my new computer and switched me to Microsoft Office 2013, I don't have Picture Manager to fiddle with anymore.

That's the price of progress, I guess. You get to look at Val's crappy phone photos.

14 comments:

  1. Are you sure that worm came from the earth? Or, did it come from your snout?

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    1. I'm presuming the earth. I do not recall the sounds of a rousing game of pinochle emanating from my snout lately.

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  2. Or is it just pasta on a plate?

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    1. No pasta. It will not make a good Fusilli Val. It will not be sneezed on to make me sick.

      No plate. Not a license plate declaring Val to be the BUTTWOMAN. Not a plate bearing a lobster for man hands to crack open.

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  3. I've heard that there are places where earthworms grow to six feet in length.

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    1. I've heard that there are places where cream sodas appear on the nightstand while you sleep, and crack themselves open and pour into your mouth...oh, wait. I think that was one of my dreams.

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  4. Or maybe a legless centipede. (WATCH OUT!)

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    1. More like a legless millipede. Except it was too squishy, no hard shell kind of segments. We've had a millipede invade the homestead. It was traumatic for all involved. Except Hick, who hoisted it overhead and pretended he was going to take a bite. Those things can carry hallucinogenic toxins, you know.

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  5. Is it string? It could be string ... I found a raisin that wasn't a raisin yesterday (I would explain more but there is a post in progress) - things aren't always what they seem but, if it is, then it is indeed a record-setter!

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    1. No string. Too wiggly. Too slimy.

      I am afraid to ponder the raisinless raisin.

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    1. What the heck did YOU do with it? It was gone when I came out. I may like a good specimen and an investigation, but I don't like a purse that gets gooey from earthworm (possibly future universeworm) slime. It's not like I could carry it around all day, letting it wind around my forearm.

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  7. I've unearthed a really huge earthworm and figured it had been in the ground for ages to be that big. Also, either I forgot (which is really quite rare - snort snort) or I missed reading it in many of your blog posts that you are a science teacher, which explains the fact of your worried about the Pony and all the germs he can collect with his clay or phone in mouth or any number of things. Don't you need germs to help immune yourself?

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    1. Oh, so the cooking was just a front. You're really a pro earthworm unearther!

      I sometimes try to keep that science teacher thing under my hat. It's more often let fly on my supersecret blog.

      As far as immuning himself, I would hope The Pony did that in his formative years, by eating that chewy granola bar off the garage floor, and licking the handles of carts at Walmart, and eating the dirt out of potted plants that he turned over on himself.

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