When the Worm Turns

When I look back on that day now, I don’t know how I can tell you about the events that happened to me and the others without you scoffing and saying that I made it up. Sure, it was an ordinary day. Perhaps a bit more than ordinary, a day so nice, with clear blue skies and the light so clear, so bright everything stood out. The air was crisp and held a hint of cold, a herald for the chill we would experience that night in the early winter season.
John and I had decided on a game of backyard cricket. Maggie and Jane were in the opposing team, with Susan, more a hindrance than help. That left us with Rob, who although still quite small to be playing cricket, could hit a six just when your team needed it. Reg, of course, sat out being way too young even to understand that he was not playing. We spent quite a bit of time wrestling the ball from his small hands. It didn’t bother anyone though, especially this day when we were all in such good humour.
I suppose that’s why nobody noticed the first couple of disturbances in the ground. I guess it was the third time Susan tripped over a mound of dirt that had suddenly appeared in our manicured lawn, that we took time to actually look around and notice something was different. There were mounds of dirt popping up with rapidity. They varied in size. Some small, some tiny, some quite large like the ones Susan kept tripping over.
Now Reg had disappeared a little while ago, mainly because Aunty Gayle had taken him inside when he screamed the last time we wrested the ball off him. Susan scratched her knee a little when she fell over, so with Jane helping to mop up tears, they had gone in search of first aid.
“Does anyone else think this is weird?” John’s sister, Maggie asked. She absentmindedly rubbed the ball on her denim shorts.
“We don’t have moles in Australia,” stated Rob.
“What?” John asked. We all looked at Rob and shook our heads.
“We are talking about…” but I did not get to finish what I was saying. It seemed as though the earth heaved under my feet and I fell heavily on my bottom. The others were yelling in astonishment.
“Ew yuck!” shouted Maggie and I gazed upwards at the huge creature looking down at me.
“What is it?” I screamed, “Help me someone!”
Then I remembered that I’d been holding the bat before I ‘d fallen. It lay close by so I grabbed it with both hands and swung back behind my shoulder. I wanted to get a solid hit on that horrible dirty pink snout coming down towards me. It swung from side to side, poking forwards closer and closer.
“Aar!” I grunted as I brought that bat up to deliver my shot.
“No!” yelled Rob and threw himself across me. I’m afraid that I gave him quite a clout, although I tried to reverse my swing at the last minute. It knocked him senseless for a minute or two, so that he lay prone across my body.
The monstrous beast probed ever closer towards us and seemed to bump its head against Rob’s back as though it didn’t see him there.
“It’s blind!” John said in amazement. He told me later that he had frozen to the spot where he was standing. There was no way he could move although he had told his feet umpteen times to ‘run away’!
With a couple more gentle bumps against Rob and myself, the creature seemed to work out where it was. Then with a quickness that belied its earlier clumsiness, it suddenly plunged into the earth just millimeters from Rob’s nose. It was just at that moment that he regained consciousness, so it was not surprising that he leapt off my body and away from the hole, with a resounding yell.
“Where did it go? What’s it doing? What is it?” Maggie’s questions sounded like machine gun fire in my ear and I realized she was crouched over me, gazing down the hole. A great clump of dirt suddenly shot up the hole and showered the lot of us, falling on our hair and faces. As we spat dirt out of our mouths, and brushed it off our heads, John cried,” Look! The hole is closed!”
“That has got to be the largest worm I have ever seen,” Rob said slowly with great emphasis.
“Too right!” replied Maggie.
“Wha…?” John and I said.
“Oi! Are you kids playing cricket or digging holes in my lawn with the cricket bat?” yelled my dad from inside.