There are words and there are languages, and some combinations and better than others. Take the dutch word slakken. Is anything else better to describe worms? The spanish gusanos doesn’t even get close. The sound “slakken” rolls… well, as a worm would do.
As a matter of fact, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the worms that inhabit our garden. There was a time, when I use to smoke deep in the night, that I would forget about them. I would be writing, or reading, and then I would go out to get a cigarette. The worms will be, actually and literally, waiting for me to appear. So I will be happily about to turn on my vice, and after the first step outside, suddenly the under side of my feet with be all gluey with the mortal rests of the worm suicide squad. Worst of all, these are not normal simply squishy worms, not at all. They belong to this kind that is hard and probably some day some entrepreneur will analyze and patent the most sticky glue in the known universe. I tell you, it is not an easy matter to remove their corpses from your already horrified underfoot.
The whole funny thing of this is that I am, indeed and after all, a biologist. And I (not that I’m proud about it but anyway) routinely poke fun on my fellow urbanites, the ones that screech at the sight of a spider, melt at the sight of a puppy of anything, or decide to go vegetarian because “animals are so cute”. To all this people, sooner or later, I look with undisguised paternalistic and patronizing arched eyebrows and, more often than not, launch a tirade about our true animal heritage, about the nonsense of allowing ourselves be manipulated by evolutionary created signals and whatever else comes to my mind. I gotta say it, now and then I am stupidly arrogant.
And then again, am I? Few months ago I read about the surfer that after being mauled by a white shark, decided to launch a campaign of protecting sharks against humans. She keep on claiming that is we theories that invade their place, so it is us the nones that need to take care and be humble. Or that guy that make the Guardian headlines yesterday after being mauled by a brown bear, quoted saying that “it didn’t matter, I had a good life… if it killed me, it killed me and that’s that”. And then compare that to my friends carping about flowers eaten in one night, or hearing myself complaining because when I crush then, their corpses are disgusting… I mean, we should really be a bit more tolerant of this minimal remaining of nature that decides to live close to us in our garden, shouldn’t we?
And then again, I can’t really battle the sense of dizziness and retching of even remembering how those worms entrails sticks to my skin. I think I am going to try and tame some porcupines to be kept in our garden. After all, those are cute animals, aren’t they?