A Story About Worms

Randall is still alive. I KNOW! Can you believe it? Nate looked up tiger salamanders and it turns out they can live up to 25 years. So Caedmon could possibly be in his 30's when old Randall finally kicks the bucket. His own kids could play with Randall. That is so weird to me.

That is if we don't kill him first. We were headed out of town last week and one of the items on my "things to do before we leave" list was to buy nightcrawlers for old Rand. We were out. He was getting hungry. Well, I forgot to buy them and on sunday night on our way home from my Grandma's birthday party, we swung into Walmart to pick up a dozen. Picture this: lady in fancy clothes and red dress coat bringing a container of nightcrawlers to the register. "Is this all for you?" Um, yeah. Just the nightcrawlers.

So we get home and Caedmon goes down to distribute the food to the starving salamander. I double checked to make sure he was fed and asked Caedmon if Randall ate the worm. "No, it fell apart in my hand." Um, WHAT? So I looked and sure enough we had dead, decomposing worms on our hands. Soooo gross. So he and I grabbed the receipt and made another trip out to Walmart. A quick peek under every lid of every nightcrawler container revealed that they weren't taking very good care of their worms. Some were covered in mold, other were just a wad of dead worms. We left empty handed. Randall would have to fast just one more meal.

Then next morning I stopped in at a local sports shop. I requested nightcrawlers, and was told that they were out. The county conservationist had just cleaned them out of worms to feed their critters. "Alrighty", I said. "I'll just take a dozen meal worms." He hooked me up with a little clear container of grub-like worms and sawdust. "YAY!" I thought. "Randall will eat well today!".

I came in the front door and unloaded all of the other things I had in my arms. I handed the small cup of meal worms to Gemma and said "Here, hold this for a second" while I hung up my purse and walked into the kitchen. About thirty seconds later Gemma walked up to me, meal worm cup in hand and reported "Toby didn't like them. He spit it out."

WHAT??!!??!!

HE WHAT??!!??!!

Oh my gosh. I died laughing. The poor kid tried to eat a meal worm. Big sister fed one to him. Apparently they aren't very yummy, at least for kids.

Randall didn't spit his out.