I was spading up the earth in the dahlia-bed, when the children came up, a shouting band of them, just out of school, and noticed that the angleworms were “out.” This first, indubitable sign of spring in Vermont always suggests to adolescent Vermonters the first fishing expedition. But ten-year-olds and under think of the early brood of first-hatched chicks.
“Hey, Jimmy, angleworms!”
“Carl, run get a can!”
“Here’s a fat one!”
They swooped down on me and squatted along the edge of the spaded earth, pecking and snatching and chattering like a flock of sparrows. As I spaded on, I heard bits of their talk, “Won’t the chicks just love them!” “First worms those chicks ever saw.” “No, Carl, that’s too few, let’s wait till we get a lot. It’s such fun to drop in a whole bunch.” “They love angleworms so!”
Then I heard the inevitable fanciful suggestion from the imaginative one of the group, “I bet we seem to the chicks just like giants ... no, giants are always mean ... like gods.”
They fell on this idea, chattering and snatching, as they had at the worms: “Let’s be gods! I’ll be Jupiter.”
“I want to be Mars.”
“Loki! Loki!”