Early Bird Strikes Again

Readers, I've been birded! That wily octogenarian, Early Bird, has done something to me. I'm cranky, drooly, feverish, and worst of all sleepless! How can I be expected to combat injustice with no sleep? Crime-fighters need to be sharp and well rested. I must find a way to thwart Early Bird's plan. But how?

Let me back up and explain how it all started. About a week about, I awoke from a sound sleep, around 2 a.m., drenched in my own spit, and with an uncontrollable desire to compost things. This desire to chew was so great that I started gnawing on my own hand! I was so frightened by my inability to control this impulse that I began to cry. Yes, cry! The mighty Worm was reduced to tears. La Vaca, awoken by my distress, immediately whisked me away from my burrow. Thinking, understandably, that I was hungry she tried to give me my favorite food, la leche de la madre. But while I can never really say no to this heavenly ambrosia, my heart was just not into it. To make La Vaca happy, I nibbled a bit here and a bit there but the need to chew trumped even my need to eat. In my delirium, I even tried to compost La Vaca! (BTW don't ever try to compost La Vaca. . . she gets really upset). Finally, not knowing how to help me, La Vaca summoned The Agriculturalist.

The Agriculturalist and I spent the good chunk of the evening trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When suddenly, just as dawn was approaching, my need to chew subsided and I was able to drift off into a fitful slumber. Yet rest, that elusive minx, played coy. For shortly after I fell asleep, I woke up drenched not in my own spit but rather in sweat. La Vaca and the Agriculturalist huddled over me sizing up my affliction. The Agriculturalist wisely decided to check my temperature, 100.4! Readers, I'll admit that once I heard the news about my temperature, I may have lost my cool. Okay, I definitely lost my cool. Some might even have called me hysterical. It's just that I'd never been sick before and confronting my own mortality was just too much for this small worm to take.

It was during this existenial crisis that La Vaca called in the professionals Dr. Garofalo, aka The Pediatrician. The Pediatrician called me into the dark carverns of her office the next day where she stripped me naked, weighed me, and prodded me in various orifices. I don't know how any of this helps a fever; but she is The Pediatrician and you don't question The Pediatrician. After being handled like an animal sold at market, I braced myself for the good doctor's diagnosis. . . I was "pre-teething". I was getting teeth. Teeth, you say? Yes, TEETH! Bones that are going to push their way through my flesh. The horror! I shudder even now at the thought. Who has ever heard of a worm with teeth? Worms don't have teeth; it is a clear attempt to de-worm me and transform me into something else, something more . . . human, less . . . super.

This attempt to mutate me from my worm-like self can only be the work of a bitter rival, one so filled with vitrol that they seek vengenacne by changing my very being. It has to be the work of The Early Bird. Like Spiderman and the Fantastic Four before me, I can only assume that this devious plot has been done through invisible radiation shot at me during my patrols with The Agriculturalist. This is the only thing that I can think of that would cause such a mutation to appear so suddenly.

Strangly both the Agriculturalist and La Vaca seem excited by this and not enraged, as I hoped they would be. Perhaps this "teething" has advantages that I have yet to see. I will need to meditate on it further. Until then readers. . . pray for me.