2001-12-31 | 1:29 p.m.
herman and the wormie

i stepped through a sliding glass door into the backyard and the sunshine just in time to see a yellow puffball, which i recognized as our pet chick, herman, tear by chasing some lime green thing that was about half his size and very fast. a second later they sped by again and into the side yard. i followed them cause i was very curious about what was going on.

when i got there, i found herman with a giant caterpillar writhing in his beak. suddenly it wriggled free and jumped away from him-- and not just any jump; the caterpillar leapt over a telephone line! but his amazing display of acrobatics was absolutely fruitless as herman was waiting, mouth agape, to catch him when he came back down.

poor wormie! i hadda save him. i pulled him away from herman and set him on a flower next to the house. i was just about to tell herman he should go have some nice corn instead when a spider the size of herman with a pattern like a rattlesnake scurried down out of a tree and climbed the flower to perch herself next to the caterpillar. she raised a few of her legs and patted the caterpillar on the head. awwww! then she pounced on him. i snatched the caterpillar from the spider’s grasp. i hadn’t rescued him just to be eaten by somebody else!

he looked up at me from my hand with this look that seemed to me to say, “thank you so much for rescuing me,” but it turned out that what he meant to say was, “you look like you’d be pretty tasty,” because in the next moment his jaws were sunk deep into my wrist. YOUCH! i tried to fling him off, but he just dangled there from my hand. in an act of desperation, i lowered his tail to the spider who gladly yanked him away and gobbled him up. that’s what you get, ungrateful worm!

i looked over at herman. boy was he mad! the look he gave me was unmistakably, “that should’ve been my dinner.”

what the heck!? why can’t i have normal dreams, like maybe a flying dream or a sex dream or even an i-forgot-the-most-important-paper-of-my-college-career dream? ones like this just wake me up feeling all disturbed.

as i stood in front of the mirror this morning before i left for work (still trying to figure out where that dream came from) and saw me standing there with the front of my hair pulled back, wearing a little red t-shirt, slightly big jeans with frayed bottoms, running shoes, and an unzipped black hooded sweater, i realized that, at least on some days, i do live in never never land. yay!