THE WORM AND THE CATERPILLAR

He held his breath. He always did that when coming up for air. An old habit, that he himself really didn't understand. Worm held his breath, as he eased his head up out of the dry top soil. As soon as his head poked through he realized he'd done it again. He'd held his breath, when he should've closed his eyes instead. Some people think that worms don't have eyes, that all they do is crawl around underground, hoping it doesn't rain too hard, and that a Robin doesn't happen to hop overhead, while they're noisily speeding through a particularly soft piece of ground. But they do, and believe me, they're mighty sensitive on a bright summer day. So he lay there with his upper body folded along the soil while his buried body kind of contracted, not sure it wanted to go any farther. Then he let his breath out and slowly inhaled the fresh air, that always smelled threatening. Maybe it was because there was no hiding in the fresh air. And it was always so uncomfortable compared to snaking through damp underground soil. Speaking of uncomfortable: he remembered that day that he wandered out onto a wide bed of hardened sand, until his near-sighted eyes couldn't see which way to go to get back to the soil. Yeah, that was the closest he ever came to getting really dried out. He'd seen what happened to other worms that did that. They had the life juice sucked right out of them, by the sun. His lower body contracted again, in remembrance of the scrapes and bruises he'd gotten, trying to follow a straight line till he hit dirt again. He lay there waiting for his eyes to adjust, ready to slump backwards at the slightest threat. He was listening to a faint and slow, rhythmical beat. Soft feet padding along as if on a paper drum. "Hey Worm, beautiful day for a walk isn't it?" He was still straining to focus, but this small voice had no threat in it. He could barely see a long cloudy shape cowering against a leaf. "Excuse me, maybe I should have said, 'Beautiful day for a crawl....' but I really don't mean to offend you." Worm raised his head up off the top soil slightly, squinting, "Ah yes, now I can see you, at least about halfway. How are you today?" Caterpillar arched his head up too, raising his front four feet from the leaf he was laying on. "Just fine I am. Yes, just fine. This is really a great sunny day." Worm paused, then replied, "Well, I don't really care for the sun. It gives me fears of drying out. I prefer crawling around in the shade, if you must know." "Shade is nice, too. But the sun warms me up and gives me a voracious appetite. I've eaten my way across 17 leaves already today." And he could feel the nitrogen rush, too. Worm pulled himself up out of the hole, and stretched out. There was a pleasant feeling to having the sun on his back for a while. But when he felt the glistening moisture evaporating from his skin, he scrunched himself together, then threw his shoulders forward, moving to the shade under the leaves. He did this again several times, exhaling and contracting, then taking a deep breath and lurching as far as he could, throwing himself forward. Caterpillar watched him and noted the effort. It was nice to have legs to walk with. He thought quietly to himself about a Duck that had once stopped by, to get a drink at the pond. It had told him a story about a journey of a thousand miles. He thought that was a dream, totally impossible; but well, we all have dreams. While Worm lay in the shade his tail began to corkscrew behind him in the soft soil, beginning to dig a possible escape route. This was another old habit, and took hardly any concentration on his part. But it had kept him alive, more than once. (His father had told him when he was still a short wormling, "You have a natural knack for digging holes, don't you.") "I notice you get around mighty well with no legs, Mister Worm." He was trying to be polite again. "Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?" "No, I guess not. I've never even thought about it. I've always had to use the old crunch and crawl to get around. That's the way of it, I guess. There's always plenty to keep me busy, and legs aren't necessary underground." Caterpillar curled himself around into a spiral, resting his head across his body. "I like busy. Busy is good, but I see many other creatures up here, hiding in the leaves from some of them. And I'm always impressed by the differences in all of us: Crawlers, Leapers, Walkers, Flyers, Swimmers. So many different ways of getting around. I like to think about that, and I like to talk about it." Worm thought to himself that this might not have been the best place to poke his head up, but he lay there listening. "You know, even with legs I can't always get around as quickly as I'd like. Ha! I remember one day I was eating my way along, and I bumped into this guy, a real Stinky Bug. I apologized for waking him up, but I couldn't get out of there fast enough! Really obnoxious! Why, I practically lost my appetite." Worm chuckled. He'd met them too. They weren't very big, but they sure didn't need to worry about being eaten. "Yeah, legs aren't the best of it. I watch the Flyers, and I wonder what that's...." Worm felt a bit defensive, and interrupted before he even thought of what to say. "You'd best be satisfied with what you are. Be glad you can walk around, while you can." He paused, surprised he'd spoken so freely, adding, "I'm just a worm. That's the way it is, and that's good enough for me. You can't change the way things are, so you'd best make the most of it." "Aha, there you have it. You do wish you had legs." Caterpillar uncoiled himself and reared his head up again. "They tell me that all the time, that I can't change the way things are. Even my caterpillar friends can't believe the way my mind wanders, wondering about others' lives." He took a few steps forward, and lowered his head over the edge of the leaf, looking down at the Worm. "Walking is good. It gets me where I'm going. But still I get frustrated sometimes. Sometimes, when I sleep, I dream. I want to do something special, something unique." Worm's tail was busy digging behind him. An escape route might not be such a bad idea right now. Foolish Caterpillar, he thought. "Things are the way they are. They're that way for a reason. They're not going to change, dream all you want." Caterpillar pulled himself back onto the leaf, away from this attack. He felt criticized again, misunderstood, but he'd gotten used to that. "I can't help it. Maybe I've eaten too much nitrogen for my own good, but I feel energized. All the caterpillars call me a dreamer, but I just know somewhere deep inside me, that this is just a stage of the journey. I believe that someday I will be wrapped up tightly, and after a long sleep I'll burst out. And then I will really be able to fly." A shadow flew across the ground, signaling the flight of some creature above. It glided back over their space again, and Worm made an instinctive backward lunge, down into the hole. Just before he pulled his shoulders underground he said, "You'd best get under a leaf, and stay alive for another day, you dreamer." Caterpillar took the advice, and walked around to stand upside down on the underside of a leaf, peeking out, to see what was there. He didn't have a quick mode of escape like the worm, but he could let go and drop to the next leaf or the ground if necessary. There was a bright flash as a paper white butterfly, the cute garden variety, landed on a nearby leaf. Caterpillar watched in awe (well, okay, envy) as she waved her wings, cooling them off in the shade. . . . But that's another story, entitled "Paper Whites and Jet Blacks."