WORM NOODLIN'

Our son, Weston, posted the following blog today:

Squirrel fishing is the sporting practice of “catching” squirrels and attempting to lift them into the air using a peanut tied to a string or fishing line, and optionally some kind of fishing pole.
In most cases, squirrels playfully tug and grapple with the nuts, while the human participant skillfully angles with his or her quarry. A delicate approach is required in squirrel fishing. Anyone can pull a nut from the hands of a squirrel, but the adept “squirrel fisher” must hone his craft, maintaining balance between himself and the squirrel, and eventually rewarding the squirrel for his valiant competition by ceding the nut.

Although Carolyn and Frank will be most interested in Weston's squirrel blog, it reminded me of a form of worm noodlin' we used to do in Wright City.

Now you first have to understand the premise that we didn't have toys, money, or any place to "go". Now add to that knowledge the fact that kids will generally figger out their own entertainment if left alone long enough.

Eventually, we noticed there were small holes in the ground at certain times of the year. We discovered that if you poked a long round piece of grass stem down into the hole, brother worm would start to push the stem back out of his home.

By "worm", I don't mean the brown slimy things that we used for fish bait. I don't know what genre of worm this was, but they had a white smooth skin and an ugly head with a set of pinching jaws that could near bout bite the grass stem in two. I reckon they were a form of larvae that metamorphosed into a beautiful frog or something, but what do kids care?

As the worm would push the intruder up, we would grab the stem and jerk it out of the hole. The more professional/sporting among us would simultaneously drag out the worm while it was still viciously biting on the end of our irresistible "bait".

Repeat this pastime a sufficient number of times and one would be automatically be compelled to find a patch of sand with some inverted cone shapes so that the glorious game of "Doodle Bug" could be played (but that is doubtless a future blog).