For two days I’ve been collecting catalpa worms from our bright green sapling. Her foliage has been shredded apparently by machine guns. Nope, it’s these bright green worms feasting away a lovely summer day!
Let this be a warning to all you catalpa worms! Please don’t eat our little tree or you will become the best crappie. My lucky sardine shirt worked a charm this Sunday for my steady-handed alter ego.
Alarm rang shortly after 6, I hustled into our Chevy Volt. Thanked the guys up the road for coffee and an Egg McMuffin so early. Cruised on Glenstone Ave. in soft sunlight. No traffic, safe to scarf it up while driving north.
Less than 10 min. to the lake, all scummy with green-yellow algae and a few fake cloth rose petals from some hasty romantic ritual. Maybe from the night before? Spent votive candles dot the pier I chose to be my fishing outpost.
Cleaning up this leftover mess, I blessed the state Dept. of Conservation and our local Watershed Committee for creating this calm zone. For almost an hour I had this dock to myself. I talked to the little fish and the catalpa worms in their jug outfitted with leaves they’ve totally chewed up.
“You devils deserve this,” I thought as I gobbed one onto a sharp hook. The worm winced. Just like the one big crappie I finally landed. “I don’t want to eat you.” Just seeing you flopping in sunlight makes this early morning.
Will these fish learn this essential lesson? Don’t eat worms on a hook? I tell myself this serves as a sermon for us all today.
It’s still shady on the back roads as I coast homeward to a harmonic chant by Pierre Le Venerable on the radio. Henry David Thoreau has been with us. Two hundred years old this week. Was that his spirit still squawking like a Great Blue Heron just overhead as I casted out into the unknown?
