Alien Encounters

While living in the apartment away from home, I try to find things about this place that are amusing or remarkable in any possible way. This makes little sense over the long term, as I plan on removing the last 7 months of my existence here from my memory as soon as possible. There are some things that make old age memory loss an attractive thing...but for the short term, I need to giggle, even if I'm alone.

Anyway, I have found one super cool aspect of this complex - it is literally crawling with worms. And not just your garden variety earthworm - this place has planarian worms. For those of you not currently taking 9th grade Biology, planarian worms are mutant cool - especially when you aren't being forced to dissect them for a grade.

My Biology teacher was commonly referred to as "the Missing Link" being that she resembled a hobbit, had more facial hair than any high school boy, and had been teaching so long that she no longer looked at the text book but could quote the words of every chapter verbatim. And she made us dissect all sorts of things: worms, fish, and frogs. The worst was pricking our own fingers to test our blood types. I swear she reused the same lancets (rusty pieces of old tin cans) every year for the 80 or so that she taught.

But I digress, as I was talking about the plethora of planarian worms here. The first one that I spied had me quite confused. I spotted it at the base of our stairs and was squatting there staring at it as the rest of the complex was walking by me heading off to work. I'm certain that they figured I was just a crazy cat-lady out looking for a treat for my tabby. Why else would I be hovering like a woman in a public toilet over the damp sidewalk staring at a worm? To begin, these worms look like baby snakes and move like them, too. So naturally where there are baby snakes, there are mommy and daddy snakes, and I wanted to know what apartment number belonged to the Snake family. They move like snakes, but better yet, they have these crazy fan shaped heads. So, I'm thinking BABY COBRA! Now, having baby cobra snakes at the apartments would really make this a cool place to live.

I was only slightly disheartened to learn that my cobra hunting days were over because my planarian worm chasing days had just begun. Here's what makes these guys so cool - they regenerate! Yep, if they are sliced or diced, they grow new parts or become clones of their former selves. If you cut one lengthwise - it becomes two worms. If you chop it into pieces, each piece becomes a worm. They are like the undead of the animal (or worm) kingdom as they don't die - maybe with a silver bullet or a wooden stake, but not with a lawnmower or garden tool...

The constant yard service maintenance of the grounds here has no doubt created the overpopulation of these slimey guys. When the grass is cut, it sends planarian parts flying only to repopulate the area with regenerated lawn mower regurgitations. These guys love a shady, moist climate (what guys don't think their worms do best in a moist dark place?) and feed on other worms (no comment). Thus after a good rain, they are out on the prowl and can easily be spotted on the sidewalks as they search for new feeding grounds.It gives me my own giddy high when I spy one moving along the walk at a good pace when I know that the next person to walk by won't know that they have been mere inches away from a real mutant encounter.

I ask you to join in my quest to look down and find something unusual on the ground. There has to be a thing or two more interesting than cigarette butts and dog droppings on the way to your car in the morning...What did you see (dead people?)?