On Fridays at night my family and I go to a local soccer pitch for pickup games.
The games are casual and some parents bring their kids onto the field. It's been giving me a sense of community, which has been nice. The life of a working artist can be isolating.
The field is a turf field, which I'm not a fan of. I get the appeal of them from an athletes perspective, but standing on plastic grass and rubber dirt pellets always makes me feel uncomfortable. An imitation of nature for human entertainment, outside next to real grass.
Then we saw the worms.
Stretched out to their full length and moving fast along the artificial grass. My son decided he didn't like running over worms so he kicked his ball around the track while the adults played to spare the worms. When we tried to pick the worms up they panicked, so we left them.
At first I assumed the worst. That the worms had tunneled up from underneath the turf, but didn't know how to dig back down and so we're stuck, fated to be trampled or starve. I cursed the turf once again. Then I looked it up.
According to scientific American, apparently the steady rythm of rain draws worms up to the surface (not unlike much larger varieties on a faraway desert planet) because the newly wet environment makes it possible for them to travel greater distances faster then they would be able to underground. What I was seeing wasn't the death panick of trapped creatures but a deliberate migration.
I hadnt given the worms enough credit. On top of this it occured to me that the scarsely populated evening field acted as a sterile safe environment for this migration to happen. There were no birds roaming the field because the lights and people kept them away. Aside from being trampled by humans (currently taking up 1/3 of the field) the field was like a worm highway.
My assumption was that the turf was bad for the worms but the reality was more complicated then that. I feel this way about a lot of things. I think even in a noble effort (pro nature, anti plastic) we can often be resistant to evidence that might challenge our beliefs. I still don't like turf, but at least on a rainy night, the worms seem to like it.