“We shall know them by the number of their dead.”

Anthony Bourdain said that in an episode of Parts Unknown. If I remember correctly, he was referring to some sort of prawn, but that’s unimportant. When I was walking through the rain this morning, that’s the phrase that popped into my head. That would seem more than a tad morbid if a small army of worms hadn’t infiltrated the sidewalks all over campus. Actually, it’s still pretty morbid. Their writhing gray bodies moved across the wet concrete and around the fleshy pulp of their fallen brothers, and I began to think that evolution was unkind to the earthworm.

Each rainy day the slimy masses emerge from their homes within the soil, the promise of a hospitable world above drawing them to the surface. And each time thousands are crushed beneath soaked Nikes and overpriced rain boots. Those that survive the traveling hoards can return to their tunnels, but many do not. Lured out by the rain, they don’t have the cognitive ability to register the rapid shrinking of their new territory when the sun comes out. They can feel the moisture in the concrete right up until it’s gone, and their own bodies begin to stiffen. Their skins dry out and the poor, unfortunate worms essentially suffocate. Those that don’t make it into the ground remain on the sidewalks in dark, crinkly whorls until foot traffic reduces them to nothing.

Most days the worms are far from my mind, but for those few days when their bodies shrivel like dried chiles and stick to the ground, I am all too conscious of the world that exists beneath the surface.

I only know them by the number of their dead.

Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/cjaxwrites.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/we-shall-know-them-by-the-number-of-their-dead/amp/