I observed an interesting phenomenon last night. My parents and my brother are neighbors, and I usually spend the night at my brother’s place when I visit home. While walking out to my brother’s house last night, it was pitch black in the field between their houses, and I was carrying a flashlight. I found it disorienting to see little slithery things on the ground suddenly disappearing right before I was about to step on them. I thought “did I stay up too late? am I seeing things?” I took a few halting steps because it looked like bits of the ground itself were shrinking away from me before I could put my foot down. I paused and saw that, just a foot or so in front of me, the ground was covered with earthworms. Specifically the honkin’ big nightcrawlers; I think I discovered the origin of their name. As my flashlight would hit them, they would slide quickly back into their holes in the ground. Since I kept the flashlight focused just in front of me on the ground, that resulted in the worms sliding out of view just before I reached them. It was really cool after I realized what was going on; the whole hike over to my brother’s place was filled with slippery nightcrawlers squiggling away from me and my light. If only the walk had been accompanied by slurping sounds, too.