I had a ridiculous experience with an inchworm this morning… okay, not an inchworm, more like an eighth-of-an-inchworm.

See, I decided to clear my cluttered coffee table of a survey that I had all intentions of filling out last week. I gently edged it out from beneath the vase where I’d carelessly stuffed the last of the garden Cosmos and took it into the bathroom light to remind myself why I’d thought it important to cling to this critique, or whether its only usefulness was as a coaster.

As I skimmed the page, I saw one of the letters moving. Now, at age 64, with eyes like mine, a moving letter is less alerting that you might think, but this one didn’t stop. It inched its way across the paper, a sewing machine needle from the end of a sentence on one line to the middle of the sentence above.

I was instantly beguiled. This tiny critter, barely a shadow’s tinge from the white paper, worked its way across word after word, scrunching up and stretching out, scrunching up and stretching out, stopping every couple of stretches to extend its tiny front legs up into the air, reaching for familiar. Finding nothing, it sped its tiny stitches to as rapid a pace as its petite body could muster. So infinitesimal was its weight, a mere movement of the paper flipped it from a small crease up into the air, landing it willy-nilly a paragraph away.

The trash bin was handy, just to my right; a seasoned gardener, I had no illusions this tiny critter was a friend to my marigolds, no illusions that it wouldn’t wreak havoc with my indoor plants if given half a chance. Still, his infant-like charm, his innocent intensity charmed me. I walked back to the vase of marigolds, held the paper beneath the lowest hanging bloom. He immediately elongated his tiny transparent body, caught hold of an orange petal, and disappeared.

Later, as the sun rises, I’ll see my way to carrying the bouquet outside. I’m still wrestling with what to do from there, whether to give him half a chance in my compost, or give him, and his family with whom I suspect he is now reunited, a Viking send off. This slight little soul gave me pause today, and now I’ve set down the survey again, somewhere; I don’t know where.