DECATUR — If there were just a few more, I could video tape them and make a great horror movie. Perhaps I could call it something like, “Revenge of the Earthworms!”

At any rate, Mrs. Griz did let out a good shriek the first time she saw them crawling across the living room carpet. And as long as it was dark, they just kept coming.

Even though I have tortured quite a few of their species in the past, piercing their bodies with fish hooks and then dangling them in the water in front of hungry fish who nibbled away at them, bit by bit, I don’t think they squeezed under the front door of my house and crawled across my living room carpet to get me. After all, I’m not dead yet. And even if they thought I was, I don’t think they arethe right kind of worms to be tending to me after my funeral.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have seen this phenomenon, let me explain.

After the foot of snow melted away and a few more inches of rain fell on our already-soggy lawn, those poor earthworms had nowhere to go to avoid death by drowning but under my front door and across my carpet. Unfortunately for the earthworms who survived the flood, making it across the livingroom carpet was about like crossing the Sahara desert. The worms didn’t make it to their destination - wherever that was - but literally dried up and died on the carpet.

Of course, many didn’t even have the opportunity to die of natural causes. There was a dog who played with a few. And both Mrs. Griz and I picked up and disposed of those we saw if we saw them before it was already too late.

Just a few days before, when spring and heavy snow arrived simultaneously, I felt sorry for the poor robins trying to find earthworms deep below the snow. When the snow melted and the rains came, they had iteasy. Earthworms were everywhere trying to escape the water. For a few days the robins did their hunting more like wading birds and had no shortage of food.

Had I the time to do some fishing last week, finding bait would have been easy. No need to get out the spade and dig for a few nice juicy earthworms. I could have just picked them up in the yard, on the sidewalk and even in my living room. I would have had plenty in no time at all to feed to the fish and the turtles that tend to steal my bait rather than get caught.

Of course, on thosenice, sunny days when the urge to go fishing comes over me, those earthworms are nowhere to be found. By then, they’ve bored deep underground again and I need to retrieve the pickax to get down deep enough to find them.

It seems things go like that. When you’ve got worms, you don’t feel like fishing. And when you’re wanting to go, they’re hard to find.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Decatur Herald and the Gentry Courier-Journal. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll @ nwaonline .com.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 03/31/2010